


Bit by Bit we Get Better

by I_Need_a_Boat



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: BAMF farmer, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, F/M, Female player has a name, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gratuitous Banter, Slow Burn, grown man has feelings and doesn't know how to deal with it, shane-centric, so much slow burn, the farmer literally could dead-lift a building and shane wont admit he's into it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:54:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28838115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Need_a_Boat/pseuds/I_Need_a_Boat
Summary: “Has anyone ever evenmetthe girl? I mean, two months cooped up on that old farm, she’s gotta be atleast- like -insomeway mentally unhinged.”The new farmer is an extremely weird sword-wielding recluse who causes Shane a lot of undue distress. And without meaning to, helps him remember what it feels like to live.
Relationships: Shane/Female Player (Stardew Valley), Shane/Player (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 39
Kudos: 243





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey folks. I've already got like 40k+ words of this written, so I think I'll probably just post like a chapter here and there maybe once or twice a week. This is definitely the dumbest thing I've ever written.

“Has anyone ever even _met_ the girl? I mean, two months cooped up on that old farm, she’s gotta be at _least_ \- like- in _some_ way mentally unhinged.”

This happens to Shane every once in a while. Sometimes, though he doesn’t want to, _really_ doesn’t want to, he’s subjected to overhearing bar gossip. It’s a nuisance he’d usually remedy by getting plastered beyond belief, but he was already toeing that line and if he swallows down his liquor any faster than he already is his liver will probably implode. Then Marnie would _really_ be pissed. And Jas would have a liverless godfather. 

There’s a new farmer on that desolate chunk of land behind Marnie’s ranch. She’s weird, and that’s all Shane needs to know about her. 

“Oh come on Sam, she’s probably fine. She probably just…really likes privacy.”

Shane snorts softly despite himself. If she liked privacy she should’ve chosen somewhere far, far away from Stardew valley to hole up in.

“She has to be an actual sociopath. Who goes two months without talking to a single person?”

“She’s talked to people! Robin and mayor Lewis got her settled in, remember? And my dad said she came by once to sell the biggest assload of melons he’d ever seen. She’s just busy, so stop bullying the poor girl before you even meet her.”  


This annoyingly persistent back and forth was pulling Shane further and further out of the blackout drunk phase he’d been entering, and he’s not sure if he’s happy or pissed about it. 

His eyes woozily take in the Friday night hubbub of the saloon, narrowing slightly when they landed on the source of the two bickering voices from before. Almost a year and a half he’d been in this town, and he honestly couldn’t remember if the purple-haired girl’s name was Abby or Penny or Sarah or Nancy for all he cared. She was sending dark looks to the yellow spiky-haired kid who looked like the human equivalent to a golden retriever. He knew Sam, the kid was persistent enough to say hello every time he stopped by for a shift at Joja. There was another kid stationed in between them, looking detached from it all, and Shane thought he would’ve been an outstanding poster boy for Hottopic. 

“Anyways, why are you so pressed about it huh? It’s not like she personally came up to you and twisted your panties in a wad,” Purple-hair says primly beneath a delicately arched brow. Sam looks a little aggravated at that, alternating between running a hand through his spiky shock of hair and rubbing at the back of his neck awkwardly. 

“Ah geez Abigail, it’s not like I’m trying to be an ass. It just feels funny, y’know? What’s she got against the people in this town that she can’t even come and say hi,” Sam trips over his words lamely, trying to catch their middle friend’s eyes for backup. Hottopic poster boy continues to stare resolutely into space, and purple-hair dutifully continues to plow through the conversation. 

“Don’t take it so personal, she’ll come around! I heard…”  


Shane does his best to drown out the rest, grateful when Gus slides him another pint. He didn’t care about a sociopathic farmer taking up a residence next door. If she wanted privacy, he’d be more than happy to give it to her. Rainbows could shoot out of her ass for all he cared, he’d still trip over himself to stay the fuck out of it. 

Shane spends the remainder of the night nursing liquor that felt like fire when it slid down his throat, and he hates himself.

_________________________

It’s well into the witching hours when Shane finally makes it through the front door of Marnie’s ranch, and he isn’t subtle about it either. He got a little loud when he was this drunk, not in an aggressive or mean way, he just couldn’t hear himself as well over the buzz in his ears, so his shot reasoning always concluded that he had to make up for it. And so he tips over two houseplants and accidentally knocks a picture frame off the wall as he trips over his own feet trying to find his bedroom.

“Jesus Shane, I thought someone was breaking in,” Comes Marnie’s hushed voice from the end of the hall. There is a candle wrapped in her hands that cast shadows all along the weathered lines of her face, and Shane is confronted with every worried crease and feature in agonizing detail. She looks positively Victorian he thinks, a little middle aged woman in her long nightgown and holding the clean end of a candle dripping wax as the seconds ticked by. 

“Just me,” Shane says quietly. The cadence in his voice sounds hollow, lifeless. 

“Come on dear. Let’s get you to bed,” Marnie sighs tiredly, the sleep still not entirely gone from her expression.

Shane hated this part, and he hated how routine this had become. Marnie shouldn’t have to mother him like this every other night, wrapping a soothing arm around his side and guiding him on tip-toe to his bedroom. She was always far kinder than anyone should be to someone with his condition. Shane thinks he might’ve felt better about himself if she _were_ angry with him. Maybe then he’d actually have to confront what a worthless person he’d become to everyone who mattered.

And some nights, when the higher powers were particularly cruel, they weren’t quiet enough.

“Uncle Shane?” Comes a sleep-muddled tiny voice at the other end of the hall. 

Shane’s insides feel like they’re freezing over. Oh god, he hates himself. 

“Hey sweet pea. You should be in bed,” Shane hopelessly tries to infuse some modicum of life back into his voice. His voice is still rough despite it, like stone grating on stone. 

Jas’s tiny figure is peeking out of her bedroom doorway, a balled fist rubbing at her woozy eyes. Her dark hair is mussed and sticking out in random places, her pink unicorn jammies tousled, and just looking at her sends his heart plummeting because she is a _great kid_ and she deserves so much better than him. This was the part where Shane was supposed to be completely sober, swoop her up and tuck her back into bed, smooth her hair back and whisper goodnight. But the most movement he could probably afford right now was a slow crawl, and he’d die before she ever had to see him do so.

“Can I have a sleepover with you?” Jas asks through a heavy yawn. She isn’t really awake. She won’t remember this in the morning, but it didn’t make it any better. 

On his better nights, when the saloon didn’t seem to be so much a siren call but more a dull longing, Shane always made sure to make good use of the reprieve. He and Jas would hole up in his room and watch whatever godawful sparkly pink princess movie she wanted, while eating copious amounts of junk food that he was certain would cause her parents to turn in their graves. They’d conk out usually through the third movie, Jas in a sleeping bag on the bed next to him, a thumb popped in her mouth despite her growing age. 

“Sorry kiddo, another night. I promise,” Shane tells her softly, hoping that there’s at least an inch of conviction in his voice. 

Jas makes a sad, tired little sound that spears him. Then, very slowly, she turns on her heel, and softly closes her bedroom door. 

For a moment, neither Marnie nor Shane felt like they could move, too scared to break the tired spell that was thankfully cast upon the little girl climbing back into bed. But then reality slowly crawls back to the forefront, and neither of them are very happy about it.

“Oh Shane,” Marnie’s whispered voice is so sad. “She’d love you if you let her.”

“I know,” Shane murmurs. 

When a few more moments pass and Jas’s little head doesn’t pop back out from behind her door, Marnie and Shane slowly make their way to the room across from hers, opening it with some difficulty and both breathing a sigh of relief when they made it inside. Shane deposits himself onto the bed, not bothering to kick off his shoes or crawl beneath the covers.  


“Goodnight Shane. I love you,” Marnie says it like she’s begging him to believe her. He finds it hard to. 

When a few seconds stretch by and Shane doesn’t respond, Marnie closes the door behind her, and Shane wishes there were a brick wall for him to slam his fucking head into. Or a cliff to roll off of. 

Shane falls into a dreamless sleep that night, hating himself.

_________________________

The next morning is the worst one he’s had in a long time. His temples throb to a fast, steady tempo and his eyes are bloodshot to hell, but he still pulls on his standard Joja Company work shirt with only minor difficulties on the buttons. 

The sun still hasn’t made its appearance over the valley, and the air was stiller than it would be during any other time of the day. Even the birds still remained tucked away in their nests, their chirps leaving everything seeming too quiet, too breakable. 

Shane leaves early that morning for work, a poorly thrown together sandwich tucked between his teeth as he shrugged his tattered old jacket on to fend off the oncoming autumn chill. He wasn’t sure if he could handle Marnie’s ‘last-night-never-happened-and-everything-is-normal’ smile, or if he could shrug off the guilt he’d feel when Jas would bound down the hall to wrap her arms around his neck as he sat at the table to eat breakfast. 

So, of course, he handled it like he handled every problem. He ran away like a coward. 

As Marnie’s ranch falls far behind him and his feet hit the cobblestone pathway that led to town, he could feel that dull ache between his temples begin to slow. The fresh air was making his teeth chatter and pace quicken, but it always did a number on his hangover migraines, and for that he was grateful.

His morning goes a little sideways when he spots the first melon.

To amend his first statement, he doesn’t quite _spot_ it, more like, almost does a 360 degree backflip when his foot nearly manages to trip over it like a goddamn cartoon banana peel. It manages to roll away from him, and his eyes follow it apprehensively as it connects with yet another melon. His eyes continue their slow trek up the plaza, and with each passing second he’s really starting to feel aggravated.

There’s at least a hundred or so melons free-roaming the town plaza, like the most bizarre herd of cattle in some terrible old western flick. He’s never seen this many melons before, never wanted to see this many melons before, and never wants to again. If he were given the choice to completely erase his memory of the entire affair right then, he would have jumped on it. 

At the other end of the plaza is Pierre, staring with a truly haunted expression at the melon herd, white-knuckling his coffee mug and looking very lost in his flannel pajama pants and nightshirt. 

Pierre had never liked Shane and had never pretended to. He hated Joja with a passion that even rocked Shane back a little on his heels, and by association, he also despised Shane. Nonetheless, in this moment Shane feels an actual ounce of pity for the man.

Determined to pretend like this wasn’t happening, Shane dutifully plows across the plaza, tipping his work hat down so that he wouldn’t have to make eye contact with the shopkeeper.

He’s almost home free when Pierre speaks.

“Shane.”  


He stops in his tracks, wincing. He was surprised the man even knew his name. Dreading the interaction, he turns slowly, looking at Pierre sidelong as he continued to forlornly gaze over the sea of melons in the plaza. 

“Uh, yeah?” Shane comes a little warily. 

“Have you met the new farmer yet?” Pierre’s voice is ghostly. 

“No.”

“Good. Don’t,” The man says flatly. He turns to shuffle back into his store, still donning his slippers. When his hand reaches for the handle though, he pauses. “She said- she said she had another two hundred. And she’s coming back,” He says is like it’s the sinister climax to a novel horror story.

Shane clears his throat, desperately needing this interaction to be over. “Well she’s a farmer, isn’t that kind of her job?”

Now Pierre suddenly looks at him, and his eyes are almost fearful.

“She doesn’t have a _cart_. She _carried_ them here.”

Finally, Pierre opens the door to his store, and in a zombie-like disposition walks inside. The door closes with a click, and the plaza is left empty again aside from Shane, who was now trying to do calculations in his head of how many melons a single person was capable of carrying in their arms. 

A sociopathic, lunatic-leaning she-hulk then. Living only two minutes away from him.

Shane hurried on to work after that, wishing for nothing more than to forget what he’d just seen.

_________________________

The bar is quiet that night for a Saturday, and Shane celebrates by ordering himself his own pizza. He’d long ago stopped caring what the people in this town thought of him, and so he holes up in a corner booth, a man, an entire full size pizza, and a beer, and he’s perfectly happy for it. A better end to his day than his start, and with a significantly lesser amount of melons. 

Except the pepperoni and sauce goes cold in his mouth when his ability to hear kicks in again and accidentally picks up on the shredded jock kid pouring out his woes to Emily across the bar. 

“I mean, it’s not like I was trying to kidnap her or something! I was just trying to take her to Harvey’s, that’s all,” The kid gripes emotionally. He looks like he could split a brick in half if he put it between his biceps and flexed. 

Emily is nothing if not an enthusiastic audience though, and she nods sympathetically along with him as he spouts nonsense. “That’s pretty odd. You really just found her out cold like that?” She encourages him with a serious look that Shane can’t tell is for show or not. 

“Yeah! It was crazy. I’m on this one month night fitness challenge where you set an alarm for every two hours during the night and then go on a run, and so it’s like three in the morning and I’m running past the old mines and I literally _trip_ over her,” The kid continues in an aggravated voice. He’s got an untouched can of Joja Cola sitting in front of him, stationed between his two elbows that he was balancing against the bar to hold up his head. 

“And what, she woke up and thought you were trying to kidnap her?” Emily tries to pull the rest out of him, seemingly invested in the conclusion of this story now. She’s been wiping down the same glass for three minutes. 

“No way, she was out cold. Trust me, I tried shaking her for like three minutes, I honestly thought she was dead for a second,” He says with a visible shudder. “So I was like ‘oh darn, maybe she like, had a heart attack or something’, and so I threw her over my shoulder and started running for Harvey’s…and then she…she…well…” The guy is looking around as though making sure no one could be listening, somehow not taking notice to the deadpan stare Shane was sending him from his booth. Then, almost conspiratorially, he leans in and so does Emily, eagerly waiting for the climax of the story.

“All of the sudden she just sits up and she _bites_ me. Like, _really_ hard. I think she might be a _demon_ or something. And so I’m screaming like ‘jesus lady what’s your damage’, when she all of the sudden just does a flip off my shoulder and sucker punches me so hard that I actually black out for a second,” The kid looks like an equal mixture of humiliation and awe, his face scrunched up exasperatedly. 

Shane doesn’t even realize he’s been holding his slice of pizza in midair for the past five minutes until he looks down. But just as quick his eyes lift back up, staring hard at this giant, stacked kid who looks like he does five hundred bench presses before eating three cartons of eggs raw daily. 

Jesus Christ, this girl must be ginormous. Or at least seven feet tall, to land a hit good enough on this kid to knock him unconscious. 

Emily looks like she’s reaching the same conclusion, some variation of horror and bewilderment dawning over her features. Shane’s never seen her look anything but positively spouting cheer and happy-go-lucky attitude, so it rocks him a little bit. 

“That’s not even the weirdest part though. After I come to, she’s just standing there all confused and looking around, and then she looks at me and goes ‘why’d you wake me up?’ I mean, she absolutely pummeled me, and I’m like ninety percent sure she did it while she was _asleep_.”

Shane absolutely can’t allow himself to hear the rest or else he’s pretty sure he’ll have a brain aneurysm or something. He crams one last bite of room temperature pizza into his mouth, finishes off his beer, and practically trips over his own feet to get out of there.

They’d never even said outright who it was. But Shane is pretty sure there’s a farmer out there somewhere gung ho on making his life miserable.

_________________________

The dance of the moonlight jellies happens to be, in Shane’s honest opinion, the most tolerable event this godforsaken town had ever concocted. 

It’s on the last Friday of August, when the heat has begun to let up a little and the trees have started to yellow with the official arrival of autumn. It’s the one day a year that Shane always ensures he has off, and not just because it’s his favorite holiday. It’s Jas’s favorite holiday, and he’d be damned if he didn’t get to spend it with her, get to watch that awestruck expression on her face every year and be reminded that there are some good things left in the world. 

There’s no festivities or decoration. No punch tables for him to lurk around. Only a bunch of people hanging their feet off the docks to skim the water while they waited for the distant underwater glow. It was the one day a year he could say he was perfectly sober, and for a few hours, he liked to pretend there could be more nights just like this. Like he can be better.

This years turnout is the same as every years. Every person who lives in the valley is on the docks, chatting with one another and laughing. Shane catches the way that Marnie smiles and blushes prettily at the mayor, and though he doesn’t like it he decides he’ll save the interrogation for another night. Jas is balanced on top of his shoulders, her legs bouncing excitedly off his chest. 

“Uncle Shane, pinky promise me you’ll tell me if you see the special jellyfish, okay? I didn’t get to see it last year, and Vincent did so I have to make sure that I do this time,” Jas chatters giddily from above him, her chin resting atop his head. Shane smiles a fraction at that, his half-lidded eyes lazily scanning the vast open waters. 

“Alright I promise,” Shane tells her after she tugs at a lock of his hair persistently, and she sighs happily against him. 

He’s too busy wondering why all nights can’t be like this one to notice that he’s being watched. Quietly, like she’s afraid she might break the spell of their happy moment, Jas’s mouse-sized teacher approaches them from behind.  


“Excuse me, Shane?” She squeaks, wringing her hands together self-consciously. 

On any other day and at any other time, his standard response to anyone looking to chat was automatic. A flat ‘buzz off’ or ‘leave me alone’ was enough to label him a town menace and completely unsociable, and so it happened infrequently enough. But this was Jas’s teacher and she looked up to her, so he’d make an exception just this once.

He sighs, forcing himself to meet her eye. “Yeah?” He grunted. She shrunk under his intimidating glare, chewing nervously at her bottom lip. 

“I was wondering if I could speak to you for a moment, alone,” She says, tacking the last part on hastily at Jas’s perplexed look. At Shane’s unimpressed stare and a stretch of silence, the orange haired girl continues with an amended explanation. “I wasn’t able to contact you last week for the end of the semester parent-teacher conference. I thought maybe I could fill you in now, it will only take a few minutes of your time,” The girl, he thinks her name is Penny, continues to awkwardly bulldoze through the conversation. 

Would it really be so bad to hear someone brag about how wicked smart his kid was for a few minutes? 

“…Alright. Down you go pipsqueak,” Shane says before he ferociously attacked his goddaughters sides with relentless tickling maneuvers, listening to her shrieks of laughter with a small smile as she clambered over his head to jump off his shoulders. She scrambled away, squealing as she threw herself against the hem of aunt Marnie’s dress, giving the older woman a good startle. 

Shane watched them, the fondness in his eyes visible. 

“She’s really something special,” Penny says in a doting murmur as she too watched. Shane had almost forgotten she was there. 

“She’s something alright. How’s she been doing teach?” Shane sighs as he gave her a sidelong look. Penny still squirmed a little under his gaze, but seemed to gauge he was a lot more approachable when Jas was within earshot. 

“Well, I’m sure we both know what Jas is like. She’s highly intelligent for a child her age, and quick to learn. She’s already astonishingly well read, and her retention ability is just unbelievable. A photographic memory, is what I’d call it,” Penny says smoothly, with an outwardly prideful upturn of her mouth. 

Shane was a garbage excuse for a guardian, and he knew that. He wasn’t around even close to the amount that he should be, and he was the town’s notorious alcoholic, slob, and asshole. But god, he loved to hear other people talk about how smart his girl was. 

“That’s definitely news to me,” Shane can’t help his sarcastic retort, but it comes from a proud place in his heart. Penny seems to realize this too, flashing him a small, timid smile. 

“The only problem I can really see is that I don’t have enough material I can give her. She’s gone through almost the entire semesters coursework in under a month. She eats knowledge like food, Shane. I’ve been looking into some online tutoring lessons on the side, but nothing has seemed like the right fit for her yet. I’m sorry, I know I should have asked you first,” Penny says sheepishly with a shy dip of her lashes. Shane waves her off automatically, dismissing the sorry notion.

“It’s fine. Kid’s smarter than I ever was when I was her age. If I weren’t such a shit parent I’d have already looked into it myself,” He sniffs, feeling that familiar stab of humiliation at the small admission. Penny’s face falls a small fraction. For a moment they’re both quiet, staring into opposite directions as they scanned the ocean. 

“You aren’t a bad parent Shane. She’s a happy little girl,” Penny’s voice is unbearably quiet against the rhythmic rush of waves against the ocean shore. Shane can’t think up a response to that, so he doesn’t. “I’ll keep on looking into the online tutoring. I just thought I’d keep you updated.”

Slowly, Shane gives her a cautious nod, a mutual agreement between them forming that Jas was a top priority in both of their lives. That made her at least one of the top five most tolerable people in this town. 

The moment is broken with a scream. Shane’s attention snaps as soon as he hears it, and his eyes are instinctually searching the area for the two people who mattered the most. 

The sound seemed to have drawn the attention of everyone else on the docks too, everyone’s necks craning to catch sight of the source, a worried murmur breaking over the small crowd. Finally Shane spots Marnie, her face sheet-white and a hand clasped over her mouth as she stared with wide, fear-stricken eyes towards the beach. 

Shane is already running towards her. 

“Marnie, what’s wrong?” Shane searches her up and down for some kind of injury, rushing to clasp onto her shoulders tightly. She’s unreachable though, her eyes never tearing away from that spot on the beach. Jas is hidden behind her skirts, her fists wrapped tightly into the fabric, staring hard at something in the distance. 

“There’s a monster on the beach,” She whispers. 

There’s another scream then from the other side of the dock, and then another. Shane can count the number of people beginning to all realize something he hasn’t, grabbing one another for support as terror dawns over their faces.  


“Everyone stay calm! Everyone please remain calm!” Comes the siren wail of mayor Lewis’s voice. But his eyes are as frenzied as everyone else’s and he looks about ready to leap full speed off the docks and into the ocean. 

Shane finally tears his gaze away from the terror on the docks, and towards the beach.

There, in the dark that crawls past the lamplit comfort of the docks, is something lurking. A creature made of unnatural, disjointed angles and the color of something evil, slowly making a crawl towards them. It was a monster torn straight out of a storybook from his childhood, something not meant to exist in real life. 

The second he sees its claws is the same second he swoops Jas into his arms and presses her head to his neck, not allowing her to see more than she has. 

“Uncle Shane,” Comes her frightened whine, muffled against the blue fabric of his hoodie. Shane fumbles with his free hand to latch onto Marnie’s, who takes it in a vice-like grip that makes his knuckles pop. 

“It’s alright. It can’t hurt us,” Shane hushes his goddaughter insistently, trying desperately to sound soothing. 

The commotion on the docks increases tenfold as the creature nears closer to them, the horror becoming realer the more hideous it became in the lamplight. It was made of some black, dripping gooey substance that slid off of it in enormous globs, and it’s wide maw dropped to the sandy shore, large enough to fit a person inside. It seemed to reach towards them all haplessly, razor-sharp claws extended.

“We’ll all have to swim,” Comes Lewis’s shout over the increasing insanity. 

“In case you forgot dipshit, there’s an entire colony of jellyfish down there. We’ll all be electrocuted,” Shane snaps, trying to infuse some rationality into the situation. It’s true. The dance of the moonlit jellies had already begun, their glowing blue bodies seeming less ethereal and more deadly as the seconds dragged by. Lewis goes quiet after that, his long mustache drooping pitifully. 

“So then we fight it,” Comes the voice of purple-hair, looking uncharacteristically frightened as she spoke.

“We don’t know what the hell it is or where it came from. I’d wager that thing against any one of us any day,” Shane growled back, urging her telepathically to keep her ass parked on the dock. If everyone could just stop rushing to the conclusion that they should all jump towards an untimely death, maybe they could actually _think_ logically about this for a second. 

Suddenly, a new figure approached. 

It was too dark to tell who or what it was in the distance, but it was small and coming fast, and it wasn’t stopping. 

Shane braces Jas a little tighter, his lungs twisting in his throat. His heart was racing faster than it ever had in his entire life, and he could only squeeze her tighter when Jas began to cry louder into his shoulder. 

It all happened too fast to comprehend. One moment the raven-colored monster of evil incarnate dragged out of hell was bridging territory on the dock, and the next moment it wasn’t. Faster than a blink, the monster was reduced to a slopping pile of black goo and gore. 

There, standing in the middle of the aftermath, was one of the smallest girls Shane had ever seen, brandishing an obsidian sword and covered head to toe in monster guts. 

The long blade seemed to be steaming as it remained brandished in midair from its fatal swing, the owner of the blade heaving deep breaths, an electric expression set on her face. She was all sun-kissed skin and an overpopulation of browning freckles, two thickly woven braids thrown over her shoulders. She couldn’t be taller than five feet, lithe and solid standing, somehow exuding all the nobility of a knight from some fairytale. 

When a few moments passed and it became evident the danger had been eliminated, she swung the sword over her shoulder and rested it there like it weighed nothing, toeing the black goo with her rubber brown gardening boots. She surveyed the damage with a grimace, her eyebrows screwing up.

“Didn’t expect to find this one in the mines,” She said to apparently no one. When she finally took notice to her shell-shocked audience, she blinked plainly, like she hadn't even realized they were there. Her eyes were a grey hue of green. “Sorry folks. Goodnight.”

She turned on her heel then, cramming her free hand into the pocket of her baggy overallsand walking off into the night, sword still slung over her shoulder. 

“Who the fuck was that?” Shane finally breaks the brittle silence that has settled over the dock, his eyes still glued to the retreating black silhouette in the distance. He thinks he already knows the answer.

“That,” Mayor Lewis mutters, horror-stricken, “was the new farmer.”

Oh, Shane _hated_ her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back on my bullshit. Thank you for the comments and kudos <3

The farmer didn’t make an appearance in town after that for another month. And in that time, she became Stardew Valley’s very own ghost story, a frightening and still captivating mystery no one could quite seem to suss out. She could haul several hundred melons to Pierre’s all by herself overnight, she possessed an insatiable amount of gorilla-like strength, and she swung a sword nearly half her size like it were a butter knife. The town was half in love with her and half deathly afraid of her, and it was the latter that had probably transformed her into local legend. 

Shane, of course, wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of it.  


“Oh Shane, won’t you help poor Sam finish his shift off early today? Lewis gave him a real earful yesterday when I was in town. He gave him ten hours of community service,” Marnie frets in her motherly way over breakfast one morning, all while carefully buttering a slice of toast for Jas. The little girl had her nose stuffed in a thick, old looking book with yellowing pages, her legs kicking back and forth absently from her chair at the kitchen table.

Shane gloomily stabs his fork into a runny egg. “Paying some special attention to Lewis huh?” He deadpans. 

Marnie primly hands the buttered piece of toast to Jas, who couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from her book. The pink flush on his aunt’s cheeks betray her. 

“What the hell’d he do anyway? You know what, nevermind. I definitely don’t care,” Shane grumbles around a mouthful of egg.

“He certainly pulled a stunt, I’ll give him that. Snuck onto Eleanor’s farm to- in his words- ‘respectfully snoop around and say hi’.”

It’s the first and hopefully the last time he’ll ever hear her name. 

Marnie continues with an amused, mirthful look twinkling in her eye. “Never a dull moment around her though. She jumped him ten minutes after he snuck onto the property and roughed him up pretty good. Apparently she thought he was an intruder,” She says with an ounce of humor, chuckling softly as she carefully spread jam over a slice of bread. 

The farmer was clearly an idiot. Crime was about as existent in Stardew Valley as leprechauns. 

“Sam’s like three times her size. What is she made of, concrete?” Shane mutters as he dragged a hand down his face. Marnie was careful to ignore the comment.

“Anyhow. She must’ve given him a pretty good scare because he ran back home with his tail between his legs after that, but not before running into Lewis on his way to deliver her mail. Poor boy didn’t stand a chance,” She sighs, shaking her head dolefully. 

“Sams an idiot. And she’s a lunatic. Match made in heaven,” Shane says flatly, waving his half eaten piece of toast in the air with mock enthusiasm. Marnie scrunches her face up in the way she does when she’s thinking too hard about something that she really shouldn’t. 

“I worry about her a little bit,” She says carefully, her eyes somewhat sad. 

“She carries around a sword Marnie. I think she can take care of herself,” Shane puts in firmly, intent on closing the subject and keeping Marnie away from the chaos that seemed to follow not too far behind the farmer. 

“Oh Shane, I know,” She sighs wearily with a shake of her head. “But she’s all alone up there, in that big empty house. It’s been months and not a single person has gone to visit. I just think it seems strange, that’s all, and maybe a little lonely.”

Shane imagines her then, all by herself in that quiet, empty home, enveloped in big empty fields of ruin and years of neglect. He banishes the thought as soon as it comes. Caring about strangers wasn’t a hobby of his, and he wasn’t a saint like Marnie. The farmer was none of his business and he was none of hers. 

Shane stands up from the table then, his chair scraping against the tiled floor from behind him. He pulls on his work hat, preparing for another day of painful monotony. 

“She’s not a charity case for you to fix, so stop trying to baby everyone and mind your own business,” He says, his voice going bitter. 

The fresh look of unconcealed hurt on his aunt’s face is enough to motivate him to walk out of the kitchen, not in the mood to say goodbye to her or his goddaughter as he left for work.

____________________

It’s a few days later when a miracle is bestowed upon him. 

At this point autumn is truly in full swing, the summer warmth of the valley seeping away to be replaced by a persistent nip in the air that chased him through the numerous holes in the jacket he’s had since his early twenties. 

He catches purple-hair placing smartly carved jack-o-lanterns all around town, a proud look on her face as she brushed off her hands, and he can see that jittery look in Pierre’s eyes as the Stardew Valley fair slowly approaches. Jas has started harassing Marnie to make a proper halloween costume this year, she wants to be a powerpuff girl (whatever the hell that is). 

The saloon now has a pumpkin ale on tap that’s tempted Shane more than once, but he sticks to what he knows. His alcoholic streak always seemed to get worse the colder it got in the year, so his trips to the bar become a nightly extravagance that he secretly knows he can’t afford. As his drinking slowly turns into something he’s desperately dependent on, his self-loathing increases ten-fold. 

And when Morris lets him out of work several hours early one afternoon, Shane counts his blessings and takes the cut in his hours. In all his time working there, he’d never once been allowed anything longer than a ten minute lunch break, so being let out early is earth-shattering. 

The saloon calls to him on his way back to the ranch, but it was only three in the afternoon and he was nothing if not a classy drunk. So instead he stops by Pierre’s (despite the man’s not so subtle glares) and buys Jas and Marnie some Tulips to put in a vase. 

Somewhat coming as a surprise, the house is empty when he gets home.

“Marnie? Jas?” Shane shouts down the corridor as he shrugs off his coat. 

Silence is the only response he gets, and so he throws the tulips on the counter and peers into the freezer looking for the frozen pizza he’d snuck out of Joja’s stock room a few months back. 

There’s a knock on the front door that causes his eyebrows to knit.

Everyone in town knew their front door was always unlocked, it was common knowledge. The fact that Marnie had never dealt with a burglary was astounding to Shane. So who the hell was knocking?

The knock comes again, this time a little more urgent, and Shane groans as the freezer door slams shut and his thoughts of terrible frozen pizza drift out of reach. 

“Yeah alright, just wait a damn second,” Shane shouts over the knocking, walking glumly through the front corridor. 

When he swings the front door open, he almost blows a blood vessel. 

“Hey, this one’s yours right?” Asks the farmer awkwardly. 

Shane’s eyes crawl down the length of her body to her leg where Jas seems to have permanently glued herself to, which the farmer demonstrates by giving the leg a good shake. Jas just hangs on, clearly pleased with herself. 

“Hi uncle Shane!” She cheers merrily from her low vantage point, sending him the most beaming smile he’d ever seen her give. 

_His_ goddaughter, the one who still hid behind his leg when the other adults in town smiled and said hello, was hanging off the leg of their questionably violent, possibly sociopathic neighbor. 

The farmer’s dressed for the weather today, still tucked in those baggy overalls that he’d seen her wear the night of The Incident, but there’s an old looking navy blue sweater underneath, and she has a thick pair of yellow gardening gloves on. 

“She uh, came right up to my door and knocked. Brought me a basket of eggs. Are those from you?” The farmer asks him carefully when the silence between them stretches into the territory of awkward.

Shane wants to say ‘ _hell no crazy sword woman, please respectfully escort yourself off my property_ ’, but the words seem to be caught in his throat.

“Uh,” Is about the most he can manage.

“Yes! Uncle Shane picked them out for you. He’s very nice,” Jas babbled happily from the farmers leg, staring up at her adoringly. 

“No I’m not,” Shane snaps automatically. 

“He is. You should be friends with him,” His goddaughter continues to chatter.

“Jas, get off her leg.” Shane resists the urge to slam his head into the nearest wall.

As though she very much didn’t want to, Jas slowly and carefully unwound her limbs from the farmers leg, and scampered between Shane and the door to get inside. Shane thinks he can hear actual honest to god giggling wafting from down the corridor, but he’s left to focus on how to appropriately close this godawful interaction.

Shane and the farmer stare at each other for a solid ten seconds. He can’t fathom why it feels like they’re both sizing each other up.

“So, you’re the one who lives here?” The farmer asks cautiously, her green eyes narrowing on his. 

“No I just like to break into random houses for fun,” Shane retorts flatly. 

“Oh yeah I do that kinda stuff all the time. For giggles,” The farmer says solemnly. 

Another ten seconds of silence stretch past where they continue to stare at each other.

“It’s Shane, right?” The farmer tugs a little nervously at the collar of her sweater. 

Shane doesn’t even want to know who she learned that from. He’s too impatient for whatever this is, so he pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut. 

“Forget my name, and leave Jas alone,” He says coldly, beginning to turn with the intent of slamming the door shut. 

“Hold on a second,” The farmer’s voice raises just a pitch with a hint of desperation. Shane can’t fathom why, but he listens, pausing just a fraction away from closing the door to look at her sidelong. 

Looking at her now, he still can’t believe how small she is. Her hair is thick and brown, still woven in those two braids that barely brush her shoulders. Even when her face is pulled down by the halfway skittish look she’s giving him, she doesn’t fidget, and she refuses to look anywhere but his eyes. 

“Your daughter,” She starts slowly, giving Shane a cautious look, “I’ve seen her playing around the mines. It isn’t safe down there, and sometimes things…manage to slip out.”

Shane’s entire stomach churns for a moment when he thinks of the implications of her words. He remembers the strange flicker in her eyes after she’d killed that thing on the beach, reducing it to nothing in a matter of seconds. Like it were easy.

“She’s not my daughter,” Are the only words he manages to mutter out. He only just catches her wince before he quietly closes the door. 

He’s going to have a long conversation with his goddaughter tonight. 

____________________

It isn’t until late that night when Shane finally broaches the subject. The lights are off in Jas’s bedroom, softly lit projections of stars and planets dancing along her walls at the slowest, sleepiest tempo. Shane’s weight is causing the mattress to dip his way as he sits on the end of her bed. 

“Jas,” Shane starts, his voice quiet and rough. 

She’s already starting to drift off, her eyelids slowly drooping and her body curled in a ball in the high corner of the mattress. She looks so tiny, the giant fluffy duvet pulled up around her chin.

“Yeah?” She says through a yawn. He should really just let her sleep, but this is bothering him. 

“Why’d you go to that farm today?” Shane asks her softly, reaching over a thumb to wipe a smudge of dirt off her cheek. Jas smiles a small amount, her eyes flickering.

“I heard aunt Marnie this morning. What she said about the farmer not having any friends. It made me sad,” His goddaughter explains, her voice lilting somberly. One of those star projections had slowly moved across the bed and was now crawling over her cheek. 

“That’s…kid that’s nice of you to be thinking about others. But we don’t know her. She could be dangerous. I don’t think you should be friends with her, okay?” Shane trips over his words a little exasperatedly. Jas only continues to smile over at him.

“I know. She’s too old to really be my friend yet. I was trying to get _you_ to be friends with the farmer,” Jas reveals with a mischievous glint in her eyes. Shane feels his jaw drop a fraction and his eyebrows shoot up.

“I uh…don’t think that’s a great idea squirt,” He says after a pause, schooling his face back into something neutral.

“But I want you to have a friend,” Jas argues stubbornly. 

“You’re my friend.”

Jas giggles softly. “No, silly. You’re my uncle. It’s different,” She teases him. “And besides. You never know! You might really like her if you give her a chance.”

“Seriously kid, I doubt she really wants to be friends with me either. It’s mutual.”

Jas’s smile drops a fraction. “You didn’t see how sad she looked when she didn’t know I was looking.”  
Shane can’t come up with a response for that. Jas had always been extraordinarily observant. 

“You make the same face. When you think I’m not looking,” Jas whispers.

Too much so for her own good. 

As the seconds slip by and the look on her face morphs from troubled to sleepy, Shane reaches over and gingerly tucks the covers around her, watching her slip away. But Shane won’t let her go quite yet. 

“Jas.”  


“Mm?"  


“Don’t play by the mines anymore.”

A silence so thick blankets the room that Shane thinks she might’ve fallen asleep after all.

“Okay,” Jas says quietly.  


She’s asleep. 

____________________

Shane’s feeling a particular kind of thirsty when he’s at work the next day. What short reprieve he’d experienced the day before in that persistent longing for the doors of the saloon had returned in double, and it had effected nearly every nerve in his body, leaving him jerky and ready to short-circuit at the slightest inconvenience.

He can feel that line being toed when he spots the farmer in his store.

Joja was not a popular destination by any means. Most in town genuinely preferred Pierre’s guaranteed fresh produce and despised the idea of encouraging a corporate invasion in their little Stardew Valley. That being said, no one was guilt-free of making a stop there out of mild convenience. The shit in Joja was dirt cheap, and it tasted well enough.

But there is absolutely _nothing_ in the entire store that this farmer could possibly need.

She’s parked in the sparsely stocked home repairs aisle. Even Morris knew it was fruitless to stock it, with Robin in town constantly parading her own small business.  
So why the _hell_ was he stocking the tool section at the exact time that she just happened to be here. He wonders if this is Morris’s idea of a sick joke. He was cruel enough.

He dips his hat to hide his face, intent on stocking the hammers and nails as quickly as possible without being noticed. Through the corner of his eye, Shane can still see her standing, staring at something that he’s sure he doesn’t care about. A few minutes pass and Shane is almost done stocking, and she’s still standing there, frozen. 

Shane can’t tell you why he’s annoyed out of his goddamn mind. 

“You blow a blood vessel or something?” He snaps with a prominent scowl. 

The farmers head turns slowly in his direction, like she’s being pulled out of a trance. She blinks a few times, her face scrunching up with some familiarity as she took him in. 

“Are you following me?” She asks through a squint.

“Wh- no. I work here,” Shane grumbles indignantly as his eyebrows knitted.

She’s dressed in something other than overalls today. There’s a soft, large, tan colored flannel buttoned down to her clavicle tucked into a pair of worn out jeans. One of her sneakers has a sizable hole in the toe. 

“Shane who works at Joja Mart huh?” The farmer murmurs, staring again at the object of the hour. “Funny.”

“I thought I told you to forget my name,” Shane mutters out coldly, stuffing a flathead screwdriver onto a rack. 

“You make it kinda hard to,” She says plainly with a small shrug of her shoulders. 

“I- you- are you- you’re _joking_ right?” Shane sputters indignantly. Was she _hitting_ on him? Fucking around with him? 

The farmer smiles in a way that doesn’t reach her eyes, then turns to look at him. “How could I forget a frown like that?” She asks him wryly.

Shane blinks at her, his eyebrows knitting. He stares hard at her, trying to decipher just what kind of game she was trying to play. Her attitude gave the impression that someone had reached in and taken her batteries out.

“The paint,” She says suddenly, the spell over them shattering, “I can’t reach. I’ve been trying to figure out for the past ten minutes the most successful way to climb the racks but…?” There’s a silent question hanging off the end of her sentence, and Shane sighs with the knowledge that he’s obligated to answer it. 

He walks towards her, staring at the top rack ruefully. His shoulder brushes hers in the moment before he reaches up to pull the paint down, and he carelessly shrugs it into her own waiting arms. 

“Thanks,” The farmer grunts as she readjusts the can in her arms. 

“You can repay me by leaving me the hell alone,” Shane grumbles his fast retort.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair in no time,” She responds dismissively, not seeming to take his rudeness as any personal insult. “Take it easy.”  


Shane watched her retreating figure as she walked easily away from the aisle. His frown felt especially prominent as he watched her go.

There was something wrong with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'll post the next chapter on Tuesday maybe? I think I'll maybe set up a schedule of posting on Tuesdays and Fridays.


	3. Chapter 3

Blessedly, the rest of the week crawls by without any notable incident. There is a considerable lack of sword-wielding women lurking in the far corner of Shane's life, and for that, he is grateful. He did not peek his head around the home repair aisle to see if she’d come by again, and he did not wonder who’d sucked the life out of her. She was completely out of his mind.

Completely. 

So when Friday finally comes and the day slowly shifts into evening, he does what he always does. He goes to the saloon and he gets plastered. 

Maybe it’s the drunken taint in his memory but everyone seemed particularly sloshed that night, Marnie cackling over something probably not that funny that Lewis had said, Gus sliding pints left and right, Emily giving him the occasional warning looks of ‘slow down a little bit’. Maybe it’s this that inspires Gus to stay open later than he normally would, so it’s nearly 2:30 in the morning when Shane begins his drunken stumble towards home.  


The air is particularly crisp that night, and Shane hugs his coat tighter around himself. His sides hurt, everything hurts and everything is spinning. 

And when he spots the farmer fast asleep against a lamp post, he nearly screams with the agony of it all. 

She’s there, head slumped against her own shoulder and her knees pulled awkwardly in towards her chest. The position looks seriously uncomfortable and makes her look even smaller than she usually does, which is a feat in itself. Shane keeps needing to remind himself that she could probably sucker punch him into an early grave if she felt like it. 

She doesn’t even have a coat on. 

He really does not want to do this right now. He’d much rather be hurling into a nearby bush or just going home, but something about this woman nagged at him in a way that didn’t add up. He’d never admit that to himself though, so instead he conceded that he was doing this because if she died of hypothermia she could potentially haunt the ranch as a form of payback. 

“Hey. Wake up,” Shane grunted loudly as he nudged her with his sneaker.

Her dark lashes were fanned peacefully against the freckles dusting her cheeks. She was back to overalls again, this time with a thick, wooly sweater stripped in intricate patterns that made his eyes feel distinctly uncomfortable. Her hair was down now, in thick brown curls that fell across her face as she slept. 

“Hey. Freeloader. Get the hell up, this isn’t a bedroom,” He toes her again, watching as she jostled loosely in her sleep. She remains woefully corpse-like, and that manages to pull a groan out of Shane. 

“Forget this shit,” He mutters coldly, cramming his hands into his pockets and stumbling off. He didn’t owe her a goddamn thing. It was a Friday night, he still had enought time to go home and play whatever brain numbing video game he wanted. Why should he even care? 

He makes it about five steps when he stops.

Three seconds pass. Then ten.

Shane can’t tell you why he turns back around. He isn’t the grinch, and his heart didn’t grow three sizes. He isn’t ashamed to admit he’s not good at sparing kindnesses. But Shane marches unhappily back towards her, and crouches down so he’s at her level. 

Carefully, worried at what might happen if he woke her (he hadn’t forgotten what had happened to the last chump that had tried to), he takes her wrist in his hand and drags it over his shoulder, pulling her close. His breaths are coming out so shallow as he pulls her against him, his face scrunched up in fear of waking her, and maybe even a little worry. Her skin is ice cold, she’ll need a hot bath when she gets home and she’ll probably get sick anyway. The townsfolk have been passing around the flu like they were playing hot potato. 

Grunting as softly as he can manage, he slips his other hand under her knees and guides them to the space near his chest, tucking her limp body into his arms. Her head lolls uselessly as he pulls her up, settling in the space between his neck and collarbone. She weighs hardly anything.

His vision was warbling and there was a throbbing pain located between his temples, so this night definitely wasn’t going to end well. 

“Jesus you are a heavy fucking sleeper. Fuck you. Fuck this. Who the fuck falls asleep outside?” Shane mutters under his breath as he stumbles, marching despairingly towards the road that he knew led to her farm.  


The road is bone-chilling in Shane’s honest opinion. The leaves on the trees rustle eerily in the chilly fall air, and his feet crunch against the gravel in just the right way to make everything take a more sinister turn. He dreads the walk home from her farm. A few minutes into this merry little midnight stroll and he's wishing he’d just left the girl to freeze out in the cold. 

When he finally looks down at the girl in question, her eyes are open, like they had been for quite some time. 

“Jesus fuck,” Shane mutters, his heart jumping as he almost lost a hold on her.

“Shane who works at Joja Mart,” She says by way of greeting, “This is definitely a surprise.”

“ _How_ is this a surprise to you? You’re the one who fell asleep outside you fucking asshat,” Shane snaps at her passionately. 

“I get sleepy around two a.m.,” She shrugs like it explains everything. He can’t even begin to unpack that.

“Just so we’re clear I’m not doing this for you because I like you,” Shane instantly makes known, his tone firm.

“Obviously,” She replies. 

Irritation jumps in a muscle in his cheek, and he damns the small quirk of a smile on her face and the eyebrow she lifts at him.

“I’m doing this because the temperature’s supposed to drop below thirty tonight and you probably would have died.”  


“You’re a saint sir, truly,” The farmer says with mock reverence. 

Shane snorts without any humor, giving her a purely loathing look. “Sure, the patron saint of hating your dumb fucking ass-“

It’s at this exact moment that Shane’s shoe catches on an awkward dip in the gravel. 

“Shit,” Is all he manages to get out before he’s tripping over his own feet in a vain effort to evade the oncoming ground, but around a tussle of arms and legs he’s met with it anyway. His face scrapes hard against gravel. Shane just barely manages to put a lid on the litany of curses he has in his vocabulary.

“Are you okay?” Comes the farmers voice instantly. All the humor in her voice is gone, replaced by a genuine concern that confuses him.

When he manages to peel his face off the ground, he’s instantly confronted by just how close together they are. He’s half on top of the farmer, his arms caging her torso and one of his legs tangled with hers. She’d gotten up a lot faster than him, like she was used to picking herself back up after falling.

His head is swimming a little bit.

“I’m fine,” Shane grunts irritably, reaching a hand up to graze his cheek. It stung as soon as his fingers brushed a hairs width away from it, and they came back red.

“You’re bleeding,” The farmer says numbly. 

“Thank you captain obvious, any more helpful observations?” Shane bites out his retort, sitting back so that his vision would stop spinning. This was not going to be a fun hangover in the morning. 

Suddenly the farmer is shimmying her body away from the cage of his arms, and Shane starts groaning when her arms lock underneath his armpits to heave him up. 

“Can you _wait_ a goddamn second?” He moans miserably, his head pounding. 

“We have to clean the cuts on your cheek. And I need to check you for a concussion,” The farmer grunts, stubbornly ignoring his plea as she dragged his arm over her shoulder so that he could balance most of his dead weight against her. He was boggled for a moment at how easily she could balance his weight, but then remembers that she’s freakishly strong. They were trudging down the road again, this time paying a considerably larger amount of attention towards the ground. 

For a few minutes, there is nothing but a thick blanket of silence that surrounds the both of them. Shane is becoming increasingly worried he won’t make it home tonight. He wonders what Marnie will think when she wakes up and he isn’t there.

“Let me ask you something,” The farmer requests quietly.

“Hell no.”

The farmer is nothing if not a persistent creature. “Jas. If she’s not your daughter, who is she to you?” 

Shane doesn’t owe her this. This isn’t a piece of his life that she’s obligated to know.

“She’s my goddaughter. My cousins little girl,” Shane says quietly despite it. The farmers eyebrows knit, a little divot forming between the space of her brow that he’d never noticed before. 

“They died?” She asks carefully. 

“Drunk driving accident. Two years ago,” Shane’s voice is unbearably hollow.  


There is the briefest moment that Shane only barely catches where she looks speared. As though someone had personally come up to her and stuck a knife in her chest. It’s there and gone in a flash, replaced by an appropriately somber look.

“I’m sorry,” She says, with a nearly imperceptible tightness in her voice. 

Shane pretends like he hadn’t heard it. “It happened. Life moves on. Jas needs a real dad and I’m a shit excuse for one,” He says with every inch of self-loathing in his body. 

That was one he probably would’ve kept to himself if he’d been more sober. It was none of her business and he didn’t want it to be. 

“Why?” The farmer asks. 

Shane is taken aback by the simple question. This was not the usual response.

“What?” He asks, clearly annoyed.

“Why do you think you’re a shit excuse for a dad?” The farmer asks again with more clarity. She’s staring straight ahead down the road, so why does it feel like she’s staring right at him?

“That’s a weird fucking question,” Shane dodges like he always does. He’s a coward and he knows it. 

“If you don’t want to tell me why then I understand,” The farmer tells him softly. “But I think you should think about it, just to yourself. It helps to admit what you’re ashamed of.”

Shane stares at her openly. She’s still staring straight ahead, and he has the opportunity to scrutinize the slow curve of her nose, the soft smattering of her freckles. She looks younger than she probably is, the baby fat in her cheeks still clinging on tight. 

“You always full of doom and gloom or do you have an on switch?” Shane asks her flatly, but it’s a genuine question. At that, she actually manages to look a little embarrassed, her eyes dropping to the ground.

“Been a weird year.”

Open and close. The tone of her voice said it wasn’t a topic up for discussion and he wasn’t eager to push her.

When the haunted old farmhouse comes into view, Shane almost cheers at the sight of it. 

The farmer has to kick the door to get it open, and the slow, protesting creak that it makes does nothing to comfort Shane’s quickly fraying nerves. 

“Is this the part where you take me inside to chop me into pieces and hide chunks of my body in the walls?” Shane asks placidly, hoping that if it were true it’d at least happen sooner rather than later. She manages a ghost of a smile at that, and there’s a wicked little glint in her eyes.

“You never know. Crazy world,” She lilts tauntingly. 

“If you kill me, leave my body on Morris’s doorstep,” Shane sighs, bracing himself for whatever weirdness the inside of her house would offer. 

The farmer barks out a dull laugh at that, and slowly, they make their way into the darkened house, the farmer kicking the door shut behind them.

Shane is instantly hit by the smell of mildew and something burnt, like a tragic cooking disaster that had happened one too many times. He barks out a yelp when the farmer unceremoniously deposits him onto what he hopes is just a couch, and her footsteps fade to the other side of the room. When the lights flick on, he has to squint and cover his eyes.

“Fuck,” Shane groans unhappily, his head pounding.

When his eyes finally do adjust, the farmer is standing at a kitchen counter not far away, rifling through cupboards in an apparent search for something. Shane, through his blurry vision slowly takes in the rest of the house, his eyes roving the big empty walls and dusty floors.

The furniture in this house had probably been here before she was. Nothing was new, and there were no pictures or personal belongings that he could really see. It’s small and cramped, but offers a strange quality of coziness that he wouldn’t have thought possible of such a space. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say no one lived here at all. 

Maybe she really was just a ghost story, a passerby spirit visiting this old haunt for one last scare.

The lights aren’t really as bright as he thought they were. Really, they’re dim enough that he could fall asleep if he wanted. 

His eyelids fall closed, and he can feel himself fast slipping.

“Shane. I need you to sit up, okay?” The farmers voice sounds distant in his ears. 

“Mmph,” Is the only response he can think of.

“Shane come on. I need to check you for a concussion. And I need to clean up your cheek.”  
Shane determinedly ignores her. He dragged the woman halfway back from town. She could let him nap for a minute. 

But apparently she can’t because she’s climbing onto his lap.

“Whatthefug,” He slurs the words out from his oncoming coma. 

“Sit still, this is going to sting,” The farmer tells him firmly.

Shane’s awareness is slow-returning as he carefully realizes she’s straddling his lap. _She’s straddling his lap_. And as his vision turns less mottled and more solid, he can scrutinize in agonizing detail the concentrated look on her face as her fingers graze his maimed cheek.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Shane grumbles unhappily, closing his eyes and feeling a burst of unpleasant heat crawl up his neck. The way she’s treating him isn’t suggestive. She isn’t waggling her eyebrows or pressing any parts together unnecessarily by any means, but Jesus he’s a man and he can only take so much. He can’t remember the last time someone other than Jas or Marnie had willingly touched him, and that _really_ doesn’t put a better spin on this situation.

“You refused to sit up and I need to help you,” The farmer says distantly as her eyes focus on the cotton swab and hydrogen peroxide bottle in her hands. She pours a healthy amount on, and some of it dribbles onto his pants. 

“Ok hero-complex, so your solution is to crawl on top of me?” Shane can’t tell if he’s humiliated or just annoyed out of his fucking mind. He’d never admit it but she’s really not much of a bother. She’s just a slight pressure weighing down his lower thighs. He would admit it was probably a little more convenient for her, and he wasn’t really being much help. 

“Calm down, I’m not trying to pull any moves on you. You’re drunk, I’d be taking advantage of you,” The farmer says disinterestedly as she slowly pressed the swab to his cheek. It stung like a _bitch_ and he instantly recoils away from her with a hiss from between his teeth.

“And you would if I weren’t?” Shane grits out, his eyes scathing. The farmer blinks a few times, nonplussed. She looks damnably innocent about the whole thing.

“No. I barely know you,” She says quietly, looking a little lost. 

“And yet here we are,” Shane deadpans, gesturing skeptically between them. The farmer chooses to ignore him, dabbing at another spot on his cheek with the cotton swab. It takes everything in him to resist the urge to pull away, but he remains rooted to the spot, letting her help him. 

There’s a particularly deep cut in his cheek that when she dabs on it, he can’t help but flinch away. The movement causes her to slide a little further onto his lap, and just an inch separates them from being chest to chest. 

Shane’s beginning to feel a little warm for different reasons. 

But the farmer merely guides his chin back with her fingers so that they’re facing each other again, and dutifully returns to wiping the blood of his face. 

For the first time, Shane notices a little scar on her right cheek, so light that no one would ever be able to see it unless they got this close. He wonders if he’s the only one in the entire town who knows about it.

“Alright. I’m done. Just sleep on your left side, okay?” She tells him, lifting a knee to roll off of him. Her hand brushes against his own, and the ice cold shock of her skin makes him remember something.

“Jesus Christ, you’re fucking freezing. You want pneumonia or something?” Shane snaps at her irritably. The farmer blinks at him, looking surprised.

“I’m fine Shane, we’ve been inside for-“

“Don’t even. It’s about as cold out there as it is in here, and I don’t even want to know how long you were outside taking a power nap in thirty degree weather. You need to start a fire or something,” He continues to bulldoze stubbornly through the conversation, not noticing the faintly amused expression on the farmers face. 

“I’ll take care of that in a minute. I don’t want to be presumptuous but are you staying the night?” She tilts her head at him.

She _needs_ to rethink her phrasing. Shane could die. 

“Is that- I mean- can I…?” His voice is weak as he thought about what would happen if she kicked him out on his ass right now. 

The farmer ghosts a smile at him, not a full one, but genuine and secretive all the same. Her eyes soften down a bit more, and Shane can’t help but gape up at her, bewildered by the effect she had on him.

Then suddenly she’s off the couch, padding on quiet feet to what he assumes is her bedroom.

“Be right back,” She calls over her shoulder, her voice disappearing as she retreated into the room. Shane listens dumbly as he stares at the doorway left open just a crack. He could see her through the slit, rummaging through an ancient looking wardrobe. He studies the focused dig of her brows as she worked.

He scratches numbly at his unwounded cheek. 

The farmer pads back into the living area, blankets and a pillow balanced in her arms. She sets them next to him dutifully, and he can’t help but snort at the moth eaten quilts and duvet. Strangely enough, they smell nice. 

“Bathroom’s right behind you on your left. If you’re hungry I have some strawberry jam and peanut butter in the fridge if you want to take a stab at making a pbj,” The farmer tells him through a soft yawn. 

“Alright.”

“Alright to you too. Goodnight Shane,” The farmer says softly as she pads towards the bedroom door. 

“Wait. Eleanor,” Shane calls after her, before he can really think it through.

She looks back at him, surprise evident on her face. 

“That’s the first time you’ve called me by my name,” Eleanor says, tilting her head curiously at him. He feels himself flush unhappily under the unwanted scrutiny. 

“Thanks. For. Y’know,” Shane says articulately. 

Eleanor the farmer smiles again.

“People usually call me Ellie,” She says with a flicker in her eyes.

Shane snorts out a dull laugh. “Fine. Whatever the hell your name is.”

“Goodnight Shane,” Ellie says again in a rough sing-song tone, her figure retreating to her bedroom. The door to her bedroom softly clicks shut, and Shane sighs as he drags a hand through his ruffled hair. 

“Goodnight whatever the hell your name is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every kudos and comment fuels my incessant need to keep writing this fic no one asked for. Thank you <3


	4. Chapter 4

When Shane wakes up, it definitely isn’t morning.

The house is etched in pitch black corners and shadows, and the air outside is still in the way only nighttime can create. He’s very confused for a moment, staring around the black expanse of the farmers house, not quite remembering how he got there. The couch springs beneath him dig into his back so he sits up, sighing tiredly and rubbing at one of his purple ringed eyes. 

There’s a sound coming from the bedroom.

“Eleanor?” Shane’s tired croak breaks the fragile silence. 

He strains his ears, hoping she might respond, but he only picks up that same sound again. Shane thinks maybe he should just damn the couch springs and go back to sleep. The farmers business was her business, even if the business was something that woke him up at four in the morning, a fact he became aware of with a quick peer down at his electric watch. 

The rational part of his brain begs him to just lay back down and score another half hour of sleep, but there’s a nagging feeling in his chest that urges him to his feet, and has him walking towards her bedroom door. 

Very carefully, as to not alert his presence, Shane leans in and presses his ear to the door, listening for that sound again. For a moment, the only sound that greets him is soft silence, only broken by the sound of his own shallow breathing. But as soon as he’s about to turn back he hears it again, a quiet little whimper followed by a quick gasp for air. 

Crying. She’s crying. 

This definitely isn’t Shane’s department. He hardly even knew this woman, and it probably wasn’t in his favor to burst into her room during the wee hours of the morning. But she sounded almost…scared. 

The silence is barely disturbed by her little whimpers and frightened sounds that slip from between the crack in the door, and suddenly Shane is nudging his way in. The door groans horribly, and he’s chewing on the inside of his cheek with the hope it might rouse her. It doesn’t, of course. 

This is a terrible idea. Probably one of his worst.  


“Ellie?” Shane hisses into the room.

The moonlight from outside filtered a soft stream of mono-colored light across her bedroom. Just like the kitchen and living room, it was almost entirely empty, save for a sunken in looking bed and an enormous wardrobe that probably led to Narnia or something or another.

Eleanor doesn’t look so great from where he’s standing. Her face is contorted into something frightened and pained, her face crumpled up like someone were sticking a knife in her gut and twisting. She has the sheets knotted in her hands, a sheen of sweat glistening across her skin in the pale moonlight. Even from a distance, he can see how quick and shallow her breathing was, heaving up and down at a quick tempo from her balled up position on the bed. 

Night terrors were something he was regrettably familiar with. So he does what he’d always wished someone would have done for him.

“Hey, kid. It’s alright, wake up,” Shane’s voice comes out rough when he walks towards her. He sinks into the side of the mattress where she’s twisted up, and carefully drops a hand on her hunched up shoulder. She’s radiating an absurd amount of heat.

“Ellie. Come on kid,” He urges her gently with a soft shake. 

Her eyes fly open and a gasp rips itself from her throat like her airways had been cut off. It startles him too for a second when she scrambles up, breaths wracking her shoulders up and down. When she sees Shane, her face crumples. 

“Shit,” She hisses from between her teeth, taking her head in her hands. She’s shaking, and it takes everything in Shane not to touch her back or wrap an arm around her shoulder just to get her to stop. Damn, maybe his paternal instincts really were starting to take the wheel. 

“I’m sorry I kinda invited myself in. You didn’t sound great,” Shane explains roughly.

She’s still recovering, trying to coax her breathing back into some normal semblance of a steady rhythm. He thinks that must be hard when her pulse is still fluttering low in her throat. 

“No it’s- I’m sorry. You _really_ should not have to see this," Ellie mutters, dragging a hand raggedly through her hair. There are some tears that slip from her eyes not on her own account, and the humiliation on her face as she turns to wipe them away makes him feel rooted to the spot. 

“Kid, we all struggle. I’ve had my fair share of bad dreams, and if it’s any consolation, I screamed during them. It was probably more the couch springs trying to screw holes into my back that woke me up than the noise you were making,” Shane tries to reassure her, but she’s still sending him doubtful looks from the other end of the mattress. 

Her arms are locked around her knees, her chin resting against them. Her shaking has dulled to a slow tremor.  


“Still. I’m probably not making any great first impressions on you am I?” Ellie jokes weakly, her smile looking frail. It was nothing like the one he’d seen earlier that night. 

“The first time I ever saw you, you were swinging a sword half your size and weight to take down the fucking spawn of Satan. I think we can both safely agree your first impressions on _anyone_ might be slightly shot,” He deadpans, raising an eyebrow at her knowingly. 

Ellie groans and buries her head between her knees. 

“That was an accident. It wasn’t my fault it slipped out,” She mumbles miserably. 

“Yeah I don’t even wanna know.”

“I was about fifty levels down in the mines when it just jumped out and-“  


“Nope. I’m good without that knowledge,” Shane insists, raising his hands in mock surrender. Ellie huffs, pressing her cheek down on one knee so her head was tilted at him.

“It’s early. You should go back to sleep,” She says gently.

“I’m not tired,” He lies. “And I have work in an hour. Besides, I have to make it home before Marnie realizes I was gone all night.”

“Oh,” Ellie says, like him leaving had never occurred to her. “Yeah, alright.”

“Thanks for letting me crash here,” Shane says distantly, unsure of where they stood.

“Thanks for not letting me crash against a lamp post,” She responds in kind. 

For a moment, they both don’t know what to say, just continuing to stare at each other appraisingly. 

“You gonna be alright?” Shane asks. Was it weird he cared?

Ellie smiles at him, and it’s reluctantly fond. “I’m alright.”

“Take it easy kid,” He huffs quietly as he stands up.

“You too.”

Shane leaves and he almost wishes he could stay. 

This couldn’t be good.

___________________________

Marnie is waiting for him when he gets home, wrapped in her bathrobe and donning her slippers, grasping a mug of hot coffee at the kitchen table. Shane almost has a hernia when he flicks on the light switch to see her sitting there, staring plainly at him.

“Jesus Christ Marnie,” Shane hisses as he grasps a hand to his chest.

“Shane. How nice of you to come,” His aunt says through a tight lipped smile. Shane takes in her ruffled appearance, the dark shadows under her eyes and the gaunt look on her face. He has the vague inclination he’s in trouble and he can’t fathom why. 

“Marnie, what can I do you for?” Shane asks slowly, eyeing her up and down once more.  


“It’s funny but I don’t recall you ever coming home last night.”

“Yeah.”

“You were gone. I had no idea where you were.”

“And?”

“Shane! I worry about you! I was a button dial away from calling Lewis to put together a search party!” Marnie exclaims exasperatedly, waving her arms around in the air flagrantly. Shane groans, dragging a hand down his face. 

“I’m an adult man Marnie, I don’t think I need a search party out looking for me just because I come home late one night,” Shane grumbles as he unhappily grabs his least favorite mug to pour some lukewarm coffee into. 

“I didn’t know what to think. You drink so much Shane, I was just scared,” Marnie whispers harshly, her eyes glossy as she stared hard into her coffee mug. Shane stops what he was doing so he could look at her.

This poor woman was unfortunate enough to care about him, and he’d let her down. Of course she would worry. Town alcoholic goes missing in the night, one can only assume what could’ve happened. 

“I’m sorry Marnie. I didn’t mean to scare you,” Shane tells her sincerely, frowning.

She looks back up at him, her chin held high. “Where were you?” She sniffled.

“It’s seriously a really long story.”

“Shane David Roberts.” Marnie crosses her arms over her chest haughtily.

“Marnie Joy Roberts,” Shane parrots back to her.

Now she’s really had it. She puckers her face into the sourest expression she’s capable of. “Shane, I’m _tired_ and _annoyed_ and I stayed up _all_ night waiting for you, and Jas was _very_ unhappy when you didn’t come to tuck her in so I had to let her eat half a tub of chocolate ice cream-“

“I was at the farmers house!” Shane shouts, just needing her to _shut up_ so he can pour some goddamn coffee in peace.

Her face contorts from confusion, to suspicion, to confusion again, then settles on understanding. She clears her throat, and- _why is she smiling like that_?

“Whatever you’re thinking, don’t,” Shane warns, pointing a finger at her warily.

“I’m not thinking anything!” She says merrily, with a positively blinding smile.

“Marnie, no.”  


“Really Shane! You’re an adult. You don’t have to sneak out of the house like some teenager,” Marnie waves a hand cheerily, bouncing out of her chair to start breakfast for Jas. Shane can’t tell if he’s just horrified or concerned about how happy this is making her. “And don’t you worry. Your secret is safe with me,” Marnie says conspiratorially, giving him a big grin and a not so subtle wink.

“I found her passed out against a lamp post and I carried her back to her house.”

“Mhm.”

“I tripped down the road and scraped up my face. And I was drunk. I didn’t want to walk all the way back to the ranch in the dark.”  


“Yes, I _understand_ ,” Marnie says with emphasis on the last part, giving Shane another terrible wink.

“Marnie,” Shane actually grabs her shoulders and spins her around to face him. This was becoming an urgent situation. 

Marnie was notoriously terrible at keeping secrets and if he didn’t fix this fast half the town would think he’s sleeping with the sword-swinging she-hulk farmer by sunrise. 

“Say it with me Marnie. Shane is not sleeping with the farmer. Shane is not sleeping with the farmer. _Marnie,_ ” He shakes her a little desperately. 

“Oh Shane, alright. Keep your secrets,” Marnie says glumly, pulling away from him as though he’d spoiled her birthday party. “You know, I was young once too.”

“This is a conversation we will never be having.”

“And when a man meets a woman and maybe they’re both a little lonely-“

“Holy shit, nope. Time for work. Bye Marnie.” Shane zips out of the kitchen faster than he ever has.

“But Shane, you haven’t even had breakfast!”  


Shane shrugs on his work shirt and hat and flies out the front door without another word.

___________________________

Once again, Eleanor slips away, there in one instant and gone in the next. Shane thinks maybe he’d dreamt her up, but that bordered on the territory of _liking_ her, which he refused to do outright. She evades everyone in town like they have the plague, and Shane can’t really blame her for that. No one knew jack shit about her other than her name and her frightening capacity for violence. 

Still, bizarre incidents are spoken of. Every once in a while some poor soul finds her comatose outside past 2 a.m., and she sprints around town carrying armloads of heavy vegetables like the devil’s on her heels. No one’s sure what to make of her, and before anyone can try to figure her out she disappears. 

In her absence, Shane does his best putting his energy into other things. Like being the town alcoholic, and working in a corporate hell scheme that makes him want to die on a daily basis. 

Shane knew seasonal depression disorder was bullshit but it was impossible to look away from what he was turning into. He was getting worse. His moods were black, and the only thing motivating him to roll out of bed each morning was the promise he’d made to Jas’s parents to look after her. A duty he was only fulfilling to the bare minimum. 

Ellie had been a blip in and out of his life. She wasn’t the first of her kind, and she wouldn’t be the last. They’d managed to tolerate each other for one night. It didn’t mean anything.

It’d taken him longer than he’d liked to convince himself of that.

Worse yet, Shane had caught a few of the locals giving him funny looks around town lately. He can’t tell if it’s because of the extra beer pouch he’s recently inherited or if Marnie had blabbed and they all think he’s sleeping with the town legend. Either way it’s annoying as hell, so when he catches people staring, he tells them to fuck off. 

And when she resurfaces back to the land of the living, it’s in a blaze of glory. Because of course it is. 

“Holy shit,” Purple-hair Abigail whatever her name is encapsulates the feeling of the moment perfectly in her statement.

It’s the Stardew Valley fair, and just like every year it’s a hit. Out-of-towners are strolling energetically through town square, trading awestruck expressions and chatter at the colorful array of tents and attractions. There are kids tumbling over one another in the nearby grass, their hands sticky with cotton candy and other sugary confections that would probably keep their parents chasing them for the rest of the day. In the distance Shane can hear Jas squealing, but it’s not really in the forefront of his mind right now. He stares dead ahead, subconsciously white-knuckling his beer.

Every year the town locals set up displays to show off their good harvests or the livestock or a couple of good fish. It’s tradition as far as this town goes, so he guesses it was fair to assume Ellie would go ahead and rig something up.

But Jesus did she have to take it _that_ _far_?

She’s parked right in front of the stand so he knows it has to be hers. She’s got her arms crossed loosely over her stomach, her eyes scanning the rows of tents and attractions with mild interest, while everyone in her near vicinity boggled with outright bewilderment behind her at the stand. 

Shane has never even seen half the shit sitting on the table. But he has no doubt she ripped it out of the hands of a dead mummy king or skeleton monster or whatever the hell she fought down there in the mines, and some of the shit glitters so brightly in the sunlight that he squints. Worse yet is the pumpkin, about the size of a boulder and probably it’s rival in terms of sheer mass. Scattered in a wide array are beautiful wicker baskets of some of the biggest, prettiest looking fruits and vegetables the valley has ever probably seen.

Pierre looks like he’s ready to faint. Abigail is next to him, urging the man to take deep breaths. 

When Ellie’s eyes finally land on him, Shane short circuits. Like he’s been possessed, he makes a direct left, and bee-lines into the crowd. He bumps shoulders with a few people by accident and they all shout at him, but he can’t even be bothered.

What the _fuck_?

Shane isn’t looking his best today, he’ll admit. His nightly trips to the bar were doing a sore number on his sleeping pattern, and there are purple smudges beneath his eyes to show for it. Beyond that, he hasn’t shaved in over a week, and he’s wearing his least favorite sweater, and he’s really just not in the mood to talk. Besides, as Shane had reminded himself for nearly the seventeen-thousandth time, he didn’t know her. 

A hand drops on his shoulder and it takes everything in him not to fly off the handle and karate chop it the hell away from him. He was way too tense for this.

“Shane!” Marnie exclaims with her winning smile. 

“Oh, it’s you,” He sighs with potent relief.

Marnie is dressed to the nines today. The festival was her favorite holiday of the year, so she made sure to dress up in her fancy orange skirts and white button down blouse that made her look a tad amish, but Shane gives her points for effort anyway. 

“Your chickens are the star of the show over here! Although I’m beginning to wish Lewis had put us a little further away from the farmers stand. She’s quite an eye-catcher,” Marnie chuckles with a look towards Shane that doesn’t go unnoticed.

“We’ve talked about this Marn.”

“She’s a very pretty girl. And she keeps looking around like she’s trying to find someone.”  


“Not me.”

“Oh Shane, you torture me,” Marnie groans, giving her nephew a good-natured shove on the arm. It’s hard to be annoyed with her when it’s obvious everything she says or does for him is out of love. 

“Please just go say hi to her? All the other locals treat her like she’s an alien from outer space. I think she could do with some friendly conversation!” She gives Shane the big, watery puppy-dog eyes that always win, and the groan that tears itself from his throat is muffled by his hands as he drags them down his face. 

“If I say hi will you please drop it?” Shane asks, discomfort seeping from his every pore. Marnie beams so brightly Shane feels like he needs to squint. “Yes! I promise!” She says in her sing-song voice, clasping his hands tightly before twirling away theatrically. 

Shane assumes it will be better for all parties involved if he just gets this over with. Grumbling under his breath, he straightens out his sweater, drags a hand through his limp hair, and marches towards Ellie’s carved out center of the town square. 

As soon as he’s even partially within earshot of her, her eyes find him. She was scarily perceptive. 

“You gonna run away from me again?” Ellie calls to him with a quirk of a smile. She leans her weight back against her display, watching him approach her wryly. She’s back to her baggy overalls, a thick mustard-yellow itchy looking sweater tucked underneath it. Her hair is pulled back today in a single braid that barely scrapes down the nape of her neck, little baby strands escaping everywhere to frame her eyes. 

“I was busy,” Shane dismisses with a sniff, coming near her stand. He pretends to take a large interest in its contents, carefully surveying the different gems and artifacts like he’s an expert museum curator. He doesn’t know what half the shit is.

“Understandable,” The farmer concedes, giving him a solemn nod.  


“And also I don’t like you.”

“Of course,” She says empathetically.

“And also I feel like you probably have the ability to curse me with half the shit on this table. What the fuck even is that?” Shane points to a blocky rainbow-colored gem sitting proudly at the tables corner.

“A prismatic shard,” The farmer says plainly. 

“Oh yeah, I love prisclastic lard. My favorite.” Shane gives her a flat expression.

Ellie snorts, turning her eyes back to survey the bustling crowd. 

Shane, from the corner of his eye had already begun to notice locals giving them suspicious looks. That did not bode well for him. 

“I think you broke Pierre by the way,” Shane says offhandedly, sending a quick glance over to the neighboring table, as he leaned up against Ellie’s stand next to her. Pierre had taken a seat near the edge of the town square, white as a sheet and staring squarely at Ellie’s table as though it had personally walked up and slapped him across the face.

The farmer winces. “Everyone here hates me.”

Shane snorts. “No, they just don’t know who or what the fuck you are. You’re a 5’2 recluse who can lift three times her bodyweight and most likely eats bricks for breakfast. Have you even introduced yourself to a majority of the locals?” He asks her, his eyebrows raised. Ellie chews on her bottom lip and shrugs. 

“I know you,” She says meekly.

“No, you don’t. And that would get you nowhere anyways, no one likes me either,” Shane reasons, glaring in the distance over to where Lewis was chatting in close proximity to his aunt. 

“I don’t know what I’d say to them,” She says with a sad smile.

“I think ‘hi, my name is Eleanor’ is probably a start,” Shane snarks at her. “Ever heard the expression ‘be yourself’?”

“Is that what you do?” Ellie tilts her head at him, the baby strands of her hair falling into her eyes.

“I don’t give a shit what these people think. I don’t want them to like me.”

Ellie smiles at him a little bit in a way that makes him feel funny. 

“Could’ve fooled me,” She says with a secretive flicker in her green-grey eyes. Shane purposefully stares anywhere but at her, feeling some unknown heat crawl up his neck.

“I almost forgot,” Ellie says suddenly, her face brightening. She leans back over her table, one of her legs kicking in the air and giving him a birds-eye view of her garden galoshes. When she comes back up, there’s a wicker basket in her arms. “These are for you.”

Baffled and with eyes wider than full moons, Shane numbly takes the basket in his arms, staring with total bewilderment at its contents. 

Hot peppers.

Shane is short-circuiting. “How did you- what- but-“

“Are they okay?” The farmer asks weakly, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly like they weren’t the most beautiful basket of hot peppers he’d ever laid eyes on. 

“Who told you?” Shane’s voice is harsher than he intends.

“Told me what?” Ellie looks genuinely confused, and a tad frightened.

He has to actually recollect himself for a moment. His throat is working up and down to create some semblance of words. 

“These are my favorites,” Shane mumbles, his face going a mosaic of red hues as he stared at the peppers. 

The farmer looks so happy for a moment it shocks him. The smile she gives is almost like she’s won something big, like making him happy was one of the single greatest things to happen to her in a long time. There’s relief there too. He commits it to memory, because it’s a bright and fiery thing, like sunlight.

“They kinda just made me think of you. I don’t know why,” She shrugs with that lopsided smile, her chin proudly tilted up. She sighs contentedly, then with her hands on her hips stares off into the crowd. “I think I’m gonna go test my strength over there. See you around,” Ellie waves to him as she begins to backwards jog towards the shredded guy four times her size with a mallet and a rigged out bell and scale. 

She absolutely demolishes it of course, but when she looks back to her table, wiping sweat off her brow and grinning, Shane is already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy friday folks! See you guys next tuesday <3.


	5. Chapter 5

People around town are giving Shane weird looks and he isn’t having any of it.

It’s a late Friday morning, and he’s walking to work for his afternoon shift, which already annoys the hell out of him because it means he’ll be missing out on prime bar hours tonight at the saloon. The pumpkin ale was on tap, and it wasn’t as bad as he originally thought it would be, and it just so happens to get him drunker a lot faster than his regular poison. If he's lucky, it'll make his liver explode faster and he'll drop dead sometime in the near future. 

To make matters worse, every time he walks through town now people _stare_ at him. Long curious looks and traded whispers with the other nearby townsfolk that are just out of the scope of his hearing. He can’t tell if it’s because of the extra beer weight he’s put on or his new apparent inability to shave, but in any case it’s making him highly erratic, and if it doesn't stop Shane's pretty sure he might be forced to commit murder.

It's on this particular morning that he considers kicking the shit out of a trashcan after catching the blonde haired bimbo of the valley (whose name desperately eludes him) lean up to very inconspicuously whisper something into Alex-what’s-his-fuck ear. Then, like clockwork, they each send Shane an assessing look, before conspiratorially leaning back into each other to whisper some more. 

Shane growls and tips his hat down, humiliated and self-consciousness.

What the _hell_ is wrong with these people?

Picking up his pace and trying desperately to forget the incident, he spots Marnie exiting Pierre’s store with a couple brown bags full of groceries. He fully intends to plow on ahead before she stops him, but like most things in his life it's an exercise in futility.

“Shane! You look awful!” She exclaims with a mollified expression.

“You always know just what to say,” Shane says flatly, turning back around glumly to face her.

“Don’t give me that. You look like a thug Shane, do you have to always frown so much?” Marnie tuts, shaking her head disapprovingly at him. She balances two heavy bags of groceries against her hip like a pro. 

“Maybe I wouldn’t frown so damn much if these goddamn people would stop _looking at me_ ,” He snarls the last bit in the direction of the town artist trading speculative whispers with Harvey, staring without an inch of subtlety in his direction. As soon as they’re caught they scurry in opposite directions, wearing appropriately mortified looks. He takes vicious satisfaction in it.

Shane feels like a feral animal in a zoo attraction. 

“What the hell is wrong with everyone? Do I have shit on my face?” He asks Marnie demandingly, his eyebrows furrowed. 

Marnie makes the face she does when she knows something. Her eyes shift ever so slightly to the side, one eyebrow dips a small fraction and she bites her lower lip. It’s the guiltiest look in her collection of looks.

“Tell me,” Shane says flatly. 

“Tell you what?” Marnie squeaks.

“Tell. Me.” Shane grits out. 

Marnie shifts her weight to her other foot, looking apprehensively to the side.

“Well, Shane dear,” She takes an enormous interest in the toe of her shoe, “You know this town is a little funny about some things.”

“Comedy fucking central. Go on,” Shane says monotonously.

“Well. It’s just. You and the farmer, at the fair…and…everyone just _assumed_ …” She trails off with a pointed look at her nephew, who’s having a fair amount of trouble connecting the dots. He doesn’t have the patience for this shit. 

“The constipated look on your face _really_ isn’t telling me much Marn,” Shane bites out.

“Oh for gods sake Shane. Everyone thinks you and the farmer are dating!”

A light bulb flickers above Shane’s head as he makes the connection. But as soon as the realization is made the light bulb flickers off, and Shane huffs angrily as he tips his hat even lower. 

Shane feels strangely humiliated. Not for himself, but for Ellie. 

Imagining someone like her, thoughtful and sharp, shacking up with a no-life fuck up like him- it made him feel sick. Ellie is _gentle_. He doesn’t deserve that kind of softness, not from anyone. And absolutely not from her. 

The new train of thought wracks up a tidal wave of questions and inner conflicts that he’s not even going to attempt to unravel. 

“Well that’s fucking ridiculous. Why would anyone think that?” Shane mutters, scratching a hand down his scruffy jaw. God, he really needed to shave.

“Oh I’m not sure how people make their connections. But even I thought that you two looked, well…er,” Marnie trails off again, seemingly unable to pick the right word for their condition. 

“Marn, listen. The girl’s a total wackjob, and she can still do a lot better than me,” Shane asserts to his aunt, beginning to feel frustrated at the need to repeatedly convince her that there wasn’t a romantic bone in his body.

Marnie looks sad when he says that, and Shane instantly knows he’s said something that upset her. Her shoulders slacken, and her eyebrows knit in the worried way they do when she’s about to mother him. 

“ _Happy_ , Shane. I thought you both looked happier that entire two minutes you spent together than the rest of the whole fair,” She says gently, tenderly taking one of his arms and giving it a squeeze. 

This feels like a spear in the gut for Shane. Some unknown emotion grips his heart, squeezes tight, and refuses to let go. 

“Well, I’d better run on home. Have a nice day at work dear,” Marnie shifts the heavy looking grocery bags on her hip, making eyes over Shane’s shoulder towards home. “And a word of advice. Don’t call pretty girls wackjobs. They probably won’t like it.”

She walks past Shane, and although he can hear her humming a familiar song, he doesn’t turn around to watch her go. 

“Happy, huh?” He mutters to himself as he starts his trek again towards work. “What a load of horse shit.”

_________________________________________

It’s a week later when Shane gets the phone call.

He’s home earlier than usual, opting out on his nightly trip to the saloon to spend the evening with Jas, carving jack-o-lanterns in preparation for the upcoming Halloween holiday. Neither of them had been very gifted with artistic ability though, so Jas’s pumpkin looks basically like a few holes cut out in different places while Shane’s looked like it’d been mutilated by a drunk person with a kitchen fork. Which was partially true. He’d raided the liquor cabinet hours beforehand in preparation. 

After finger mashing his godawful smart phone for a good thirty seconds, he manages to answer the call. He makes a note to change the ringtone from _What’s New Pussycat_ to literally anything less annoying.

“ _What_?” He growls into the receiver. He’s grumpily stabbing his pumpkin now, while Jas makes her disapproving tuts in the background. 

“Oh- uh- well- I-“ There’s a vaguely familiar mouse-squeak of a voice on the other end of the line. 

“Can we move this conversation along? I’m doing a fuckin Picasso on this pumpkin right now and I need to focus,” Shane sighs raggedly, scowling at Jas when she wags her finger in his face. 

“Swear!” She mouths at him, ever so polite. There were pumpkin guts in her hair and Shane suddenly decided he’d wait a few more minutes before he told her. 

“Sorry Shane, this is Penny?” The voice sounds as confused about it as he is.

“Who?” He makes a face.

“Jas’s teacher.”

“Shit. Right. Sorry, what’s up?” Shane asks distractedly as Jas leans over his shoulder to carve what might be two eyeholes into his jack-o-lantern. The mouth was nowhere near the eyes though, which could serve to be a problem. 

“I wanted to call you about what we were talking about a few months ago, about Jas getting a tutor?” Penny helps him remember, his memory not quite jogged but getting there. 

“Right, yeah. An online tutor or something, right?” Shane mutters as he swats Jas’s hands away from his pumpkin masterpiece. 

“Well, actually, about that,” Penny says it in a tone that instantly informs him he isn’t going to like what she says next. “I looked up and down for the right online tutor for her, but I just couldn’t find the perfect fit. I want someone who will be attentive to her, you know?” She rambles nervously, and Shane can picture the petrified expression on her face. “And so I put a notice up on our town board…and well I got a response.”

“Great. Then what’s the problem?” Shane grunts, stabbing a butterknife into the jack-o-lantern and deciding to leave it there. For artistic purposes. 

He’s not surprised that someone would have responded to a notice put up like that. Some of the town locals are educated enough, the doctor’s been to college at least twelve times longer than the normal amount and there’s some future epic poet living in a crab shack on the beach. Shit, he wouldn’t even be mad if any of those fucking teenagers decided to take up after school tutoring. 

“Well, you see, I got three responses okay? And in my head I’d decided that whoever listed the most credentials could be her tutor?” Every sentence that comes from the other end of the line sounds like a question and it’s driving Shane up the wall.

“Penny just spit it out,” He groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Well, it seems like the person best fit for the job would be the farmer.”

Radio silence on both ends of the lines. Shane’s holding the tiny phone brick up to his ear, not saying a word, staring dead ahead of him. Jas, completely oblivious, has found pink glitter and is dumping it in copious amounts onto both of their pumpkins. 

“Shane?” Penny squeaks. 

Shane sniffs. “Who else applied?”

“Elliot. And Maru.”

“Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?”

“Well um. Yes, I do see where this may sound surprising, but I looked into it and she does technically have the most well-rounded education of the three. She graduated extremely young from high school, attended college at fifteen. She has her bachelors in kinesiology, and she was supposed to attend medical school this fall but she backed out for some reason,” Penny explains reluctantly, seeming as mystified by it as Shane was. 

Shane resists the urge to slam his head into his jack-o-lantern, opting to rake his hand down his face instead. He feels like his entire brain is melting. 

“You know what? Let me get back to you on that one,” Shane says plainly.

“Okay. But Shane, listen, don’t-“

Shane hangs up the phone, and stands up from his chair, the wood scraping noisily against the ceramic tile. The entire table is covered in glitter and pumpkins guts, and he knows Marnie will kill him but he’s already shrugging on his coat. 

Jas bounds after him, humming merrily. 

“Where are you going?” She asks, noticing the rigid way he was buttoning up his coat. 

“I’m gonna go kill the farmer. Be back in a bit,” Shane says simply, scuffing up her hair and closing the front door behind him. 

Jas stared at the closed door, mystified. 

“What?” She says to no one.

_________________________________________

Shane has to run to beat sundown, and so he’s panting and out of breath by the time he’s pounding his fist on Ellie’s front door. The sky is remarkably pretty tonight, lazy hues of red and pink and purple, but it’s really the last thing on Shane’s mind. His number one priority is putting a fist through the farmers stomach. 

Eleanor looks moderately surprised when she opens the door. She’s in a large pair of sweatpants, rolled up at the bottoms, and a white cami that gives his eyes access to her shoulders and clavicle. Her hair is in damp ringlets thrown over her shoulder. 

“Shane, not that I’m not happy to see you here or anything, but you seriously look like you’re about to die on my front porch,” Ellie says with a hint of a worried look. 

“ _You_ ,” Shane growls between his still-present pants and wheezes. He’s got his hands on his knees, bent over with the pain of being unbelievably out of shape. 

Ellie feigns a look of surprise, glancing over her shoulder to look for some imaginary person, then turning back and pointing to herself. “Me?” She says innocently.

“The notice, on the town board,” Shane’s beginning to get a grip on his composure, wincing as he forced himself to stand back up straight. His breaths are still coming out heavy. “You made all that shit up. You lied.”

Ellie blinks a few times, looking genuinely dumbstruck, before recognition flickers over her features. 

“Ah. The tutoring notice. I wondered if you’d hear about that,” She says, her face twisting slightly with some kind of discomfort. 

“Of course I’d hear about it, she’s my fucking kid you jackass,” Shane spits out, his face heating up with indignation. To his surprise the farmer actually looks embarrassed, her eyes drifting off to the side as some pink heat rose to her cheeks and ears. She plays with the hem of her camisole. 

Shane had never once seen her _shy_. But he thinks that’s what this is.

“I wasn’t going to apply but, I just thought. Your kid. She seemed so nice when I first met her and-“ 

Shane cuts her off. “All that college at fifteen bullshit though, that was fake, right?” His voice is gruff and unrelenting. 

“No, that’s real. I have the certificates in a box somewhere but- that’s all in the city-“ 

“Why the _fuck_ do you keep nosing into my life?” Shane is getting angry now, inching closer to her, enough to jab a finger unconsciously to her chest. She doesn’t cower away from him, but the fresh look of hurt on her face is real. “I don’t want my fucking kid around you, got it? She’s eight years old, all that monster bullshit you do in the mines would scare the shit out of her, fucking got it? What the _hell_ is wrong with you?” 

Shane’s getting way angrier than he’d ever expected to be when he’d first started running here. He’d expected to cuss her out a little bit, maybe wack her upside the head, but for gods sake. This woman kept being so fucking _present_ in his life, and he’s not used to it and he thinks he hates it. He hates it a lot.

Ellie’s shaking her head, looking so crestfallen he almost believes it. 

“ _No_ , no I’d never involve her in any of that, I just- there’s some old geographical books in my basement that belonged to my grandfather and I thought maybe she’d like-“

“How many times do I have to fucking tell you that _I don’t like you_?” Shane snarls, his face only a few inches away from hers. “Stop pushing yourself into other people’s lives when they obviously don’t want you there, and stay the fuck away from my kid.”

Shane doesn’t wait to see her reaction. The second he says it, he turns and walks off her porch, cramming his hands as far into his pockets as he can. It takes a few seconds for him to realize that he doesn’t _want_ to see her reaction. He doesn’t want to know if he’s made her sad or angry or just plain disappointed. 

It’s when he realizes this that he feels that first drop in his stomach. _Regret_.

That was a new one. 

If he were braver he would’ve turned right back around on his heel, marched up to her house and apologized. But he’s a coward, and he goes home and drinks until he blacks out. 

_________________________________________

His hangover the next day is so bad that if it hadn’t been a Saturday and he’d had work, he knows he would’ve had to call in. He would’ve hated himself for it but he would have. There’s a musty smell wafting from the bathroom after he finishes up there, having puked his guts out at least three times and nursing a migraine right between his temples. 

Marnie takes one look at Shane that morning when he walks into the kitchen, in some zombie-like state of _just needing caffeine now,_ and decides she and Jas will go visit the Library today. The squeal that Jas gives at the news sends Shane’s head skittering, and Marnie gives him a ‘you deserved that’ look. Shane can’t help but slump over the kitchen table in relief when they’re gone. 

The house is quiet. Soft, buttery morning sunlight catches against the dust particles floating in the room. It’d be a great day to take Jas to the park. Or spend time fixing up the coop for the oncoming winter. 

Shane downs two cups of coffee and falls back into bed. He stays there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sprinkle of angst, for your consumption. See you guys on Friday, the comments and kudos brighten my day <3


	6. Chapter 6

Shane almost didn’t go to the Halloween festival. 

He’d been nursing a pumpkin ale hangover for the better part of the day, but the promise of more pumpkin ale was something he couldn’t justify passing up. His head felt like it was splitting in two and every self-loathing voice in his head was banging pots and pans around the inside of his skull, but he wanted to be just a little number. 

Moreover, it would have been pointless trying to avoid it. Both Marnie and Jas would have dragged him there by his feet if the need arose.

Jas donned her powerpuff girl (he still didn’t know what the fuck that was) costume with pride, flouncing smartly in front of the only other little kid in town, who looked a little glum in his Woody the cowboy costume. Marnie smiled the entire evening over a glass of red wine at the oblivious mayor, who plowed through a mostly one-sided conversations with himself (about himself). 

Whoever had decorated this year had gone all out. There had to be at least half a dozen fog machines hidden somewhere in the bushes, and the brightly lit jack-o-lanterns that dotted the town square were expertly carved. Everyone looked relatively happy, milling about in comfortably boring conversation and passing half-hearted dares to give the hedge maze a whirl.

Shane had carved out his own corner of the town square to hole up with, all the locals giving him a wide berth of at least 12 feet on all sides. Either that, or they just hadn’t noticed him in the corner of the round table at the very far end of the plaza. He’d chosen this spot strategically, located as far away from the weird monster display that frankly seemed way too dangerous to be around. Anytime he met eyes with one of those red eyed fucking skeletons he felt a chill run down his spine, all Halloween spookyshit aside. 

He’s five pumpkin ales in when he finally spots Eleanor. Not that he’d been looking for her all night or anything. She was late to the party. 

With this much liquor in his system, he decides to fuck all and admits to himself that she is stupidly gorgeous. She’d gotten festive for the night, dressing in a tight little black dress and wide-brimmed witch hat. She has this thigh to hip to waist ratio that drives him up the wall, and her hair is very pretty in that loose bun on the back of her head. 

God, he was drunk.

She’d come pretty late he realized. Half the locals had already packed up and called it a night, only leaving the few stragglers in town who really went bananas for the ‘authentic Halloween night’ experience. And Shane, who was just too drunk to really consider walking right now.

Sam, purple-hair and Hottopic poster boy must have finally mustered the courage to talk to her, Sam blabbering animatedly to Eleanor while waving his hands passionately, all while purple-hair exasperatedly urged him to slow down. Hottopic poster boy looks detached from everything, as usual, but even he looks interested when Eleanor has something to say. 

The look on her face is guarded. Politely attentive to the conversation, and mysterious in that way that seemed to draw all the townsfolk in, but guarded all the same.

And suddenly they’re dragging her towards the hedge maze, Eleanor looking very much like she was resisting the urge to dig her heels into the pavement and make a break for it. Nonetheless, she and the others disappear behind the entrance of shrubbery, reduced to a wisp of curly hair and a slip of black dress.

The second she’s out of sight some unknown tension releases from his shoulders. He lets out a gust of air and downs the rest of his pumpkin ale. He drinks three more glasses, time slipping away from him like smoke. He dips in and out of consciousness, briefly falling asleep and waking up. Shane isn't sure if it's been minutes or hours since those kids had gone into the bushes, but the dwindling number of people left in the town square lead him to believe the latter.

He hadn’t heard Marnie approach, so when she grabs his shoulder he nearly jumps out of his own skin. 

“Jesus Marn,” Shane hisses irritably, massaging the dull throbbing pulse between his temples. “Warn a guy next time,” He mutters. 

“I’ve been calling your name for the past three minutes,” Marnie’s sharp voice cuts through his oncoming migraine. She grabs him by the ear, dragging him up, and Shane releases a litany of curses as he remembers what it was like to be sixteen years old and living on the ranch during the summers. 

“Ow ow ow _ow_ , Marnie cut that shit out,” Shane grits from between his teeth, letting himself be dragged uselessly. 

Marnie’s face is crumpled up like a piece of paper, all worried lines and creases. Shane desperately tries to sober himself up despite the way his head spins. 

“Jas has been missing for the past half hour. I can’t find her anywhere,” Marnie’s voice breaks like she’s about to start crying in earnest, which registers to Shane the same way a slap across the face would.

He pulls himself up from his chair, grabbing her elbows carefully as she tries to steady her shuddery breathing.

Has she been looking for Jas the past half hour all by herself? Shane thinks about the last half hour he’s spent pitying himself and drinking shitty pumpkin ale, and categorizes it along with the other big reasons he should really just kill himself. 

“Marnie, calm down. I’m sure she’s just goofing off with that other little kid somewhere,” Shane insists roughly, despite the growing pit of unease in his stomach. Jas never wandered very far. “She’s a smart kid, she wouldn’t want to make you worry.”

“I have looked high and low Shane,” Marnie’s watery voice is exhausted. She takes a deep, shuddering sigh, and drags a hand down her weathered face. 

Shane had been shouldering his parental duties onto Marnie for a long time now. She’d taken it in stride, had swatted his help away when she knew he wasn’t fit to give it, even though it was his responsibility. And now, Shane realizes, that she’d never really asked for all this. He’d piled it onto her with no warning.

“I’ll find her,” Shane finds his voice, rough. “I’m so sorry Marn, I’ll-“

A heavy weight careens into his side, wrapping tight little arms around his waist and not letting go. The force was almost enough to knock him over, and he stumbles a few steps. 

Shane blinks down at his goddaughter, nonplussed. Marnie looks like she might faint. 

“I found her?” Shane makes a dumb face. 

Apparently that was Marnie’s breaking point. A tight sob escapes her, and she falls to her knees so that Jas can throw her arms over her shoulders. Shane watches them with an unnamed emotion gripping his throat, making it impossible for him to speak. 

“You’re grounded!” Marnie sobs, stroking the back of Jas’s head.

“I’m sorry aunt Marnie,” Jas mumbles into her shoulder, little hands twining around his aunts neck. Her costume was dirty and there were twigs in her hair, but other than that she seemed unscathed. “I got lost in the hedge maze.”

“Jasper! You are _way_ too little to be going into the hedge maze alone! I’ve told you this!” Marnie chastises her ruthlessly. She only uses Jas’s full name when she’s _really_ frazzled. 

“I know. I’m sorry,” Jas apologizes solemnly, patting her aunts back in a way that was probably meant to comfort. As it were, she continued to blubber into Jas’s hair.  


“Why are you so- so dirty?” Marnie asks incredulously after a moment, picking leafs out of Jas’s hair and wiping a smudge of dirt off her cheek. 

Jas winces, looking guiltily off to the side. 

“I got stuck in one of the hedges,” She admits glumly. 

“ _What_?” Marnie shrieks, aghast. She looks like she's in mid-heart attack.

Shane snorts. “Kid. You’re not supposed to go _in_ the bushes.”

Jas quiets, not directly looking at him. There’s this guarded look on her face that confuses Shane. He’d always teased her like this. Usually, she laughed. 

“I asked you to go with me yesterday, remember? You said you would,” Jas says quietly, expression mute. 

Momentary confusion gives way to realization, and there are a total of five seconds where Shane lets himself feel like a pile of shit. Then, he drops down to his knees, and pulls Jas towards him into a hug. Even though he doesn’t deserve it, not even a little, she wraps her arms around him and sighs. 

She _had_ asked. But through the haze of alcohol, he’d let himself forget. 

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Shane mumbles sincerely, his expression dark. Letting down his loved ones seemed to be a new theme in his daily life. 

“S’okay. People forget sometimes,” Jas informs him softly, like it were that simple. Shane squeezes her just a little harder. 

He pulls away but keeps her at an arms length, so that he can see her expression. She looks truly undisturbed by him, which is maybe a blessing. 

“I wasn’t scared. The farmer came and got me,” Jas tells him reassuringly, and the hollow pit in his stomach gapes even wider. The shock on his face must be apparent, because she continues. 

“I was really stuck, so she must have heard me moving around in there. She cut me out with her sword and carried me all the way back to the beginning. She’s nice,” Jas says with an adoring look on her face.

Shane stands then, a taut expression on his face as his eyes searched the plaza.

Eleanor is staring with a blank expression at the monster display. Like all the energy has been drained out of her. But there’s still a loose hand placed on the hilt of her sword strapped to her side, there in case she needed it. Sam and his friends are nowhere in sight. 

She must have noticed the movement of Shane standing, because she glances over to him, expression unreadable. 

The second their eyes meet she shutters them, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear and ducking her head as she walked away, back towards the empty farm. Shane watches her go, his heart sinking. 

_______________________________________

Shane is going to regret doing this, but the Halloween festival had overwhelmed him in a way he didn’t really understand.

Still in his shabby-blue button up work shirt and donning his excuse for a work cap, he trudged down the unkempt dirt road, working out possibly the worst failure of a speech known to mankind. There was a pizza box balanced in his arms, the hot bottom side of the cardboard transferring a soothing amount of heat to his forearms. 

“Hey Ellie, sorry I’m a huge fucking disaster and I told you to stay away from me and my family like some upper-middle class suburban soccer mom that one time. Here’s this pizza,” Shane mutters unhappily to himself, using one free hand to run a hand through his hair exasperatedly. The brown-verging-on-raven strands fell limply back into his eyes, and Shane conceded to keep his work hat stuffed into his back pocket. 

He really, really didn’t understand why he felt so compelled to apologize. It wasn’t like they’d really been friends in the first place. But from a more sober point of view, even he could admit that the farmer was…tolerable.

And something about seeing her walk home all alone that night of the Halloween festival had shaken him. He couldn’t understand why he felt so damn _bothered_ about the way she’d looked so sad. 

And so here he was. Walking down the dirt road to her house, on a perfect night to get blackout drunk and forget who he was for a few hours. With a pizza. 

This was such an awful idea.

Before he can chicken out and call it quits, flee towards the ranch and sadly eat this whole pizza alone in his room, he finally spots the farmhouse in the distance. Dread twists a knot in his stomach the size of a soccer ball.

When he finally reaches the front porch, he parks himself in front of her door, waiting on his fist to reach up and knock. His fist seems to have other plans though, remaining stiffly wrapped around the pizza box. 

What if she didn’t want to see him? He’d given her more than a dozen reasons not to. He’d been so fucking awful to her, if he were in her shoes he’d take that sword of hers and put it to good use. 

But she wasn’t him. And for whatever godforsaken reason he couldn’t seem to grasp, she’d always been kind to him. Undeservedly kind. 

He knocks three times, chewing the inside of his cheek painfully. 

After thirty seconds pass and nothing happens, Shane surrenders and takes the hint. 

“Hey uh- listen. I was really a piece of shit to you a few days ago, and I just- wanted to apologize. I didn’t really mean any of the shit I said, I mean- the battling ancient monsters in the fucking mines shit does freak me out but- that’s not the point- uh…” Shane trails off, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose as he viewed that entire train-wreck of an apology in it’s entirety. “Basically I was the biggest asshole and I’m sorry. I brought you this pizza from the saloon, I’ll leave it outside,” He says to the door, leaning down to set the cardboard box on the porch.

And with that, he awkwardly brushes his hands off on his pants, staring resolutely at the fast darkening sky. He stays like that for a moment, listening to the frosty autumn air rustle the yellowing leaves, and observing the russet colored sunset.

“And just for the record,” Shane blurts out suddenly, even though he knows he’s embarrassing himself. “I think you’d be a great tutor for Jas. You’re uh- you’re smart. She’d like you a lot.”

Shane waits, staring for another twenty seconds at the door, hopeful. 

But that times comes and goes, and when it’s gone, Shane trudges home, his hands crammed into his coat pockets, knowing that he’d managed to fuck up one of the only good things he’d ever had. 

_______________________________________

By the next day Shane is completely at peace with the fact that he will probably never talk to Ellie again. He’d burned that bridge and crossed it, and now he’d have to man up and deal with the consequences. 

But that heavy feeling that had settled between his temples told him otherwise. Marnie had warily commented that he’d looked “green around the gills” when he’d sat down at the table for breakfast morning, and had even gone as far as to asking if maybe he should call in sick. He’d tried not to act too annoyed when Marnie had pressed a hand to his forehead and insisted a fever was coming on, swatting her motherly tendencies away gently and shrugging his coat on to leave for work. 

Work blessedly passed by without a hitch, and when he planted himself down at his usual stool in the saloon that night, he started to feel a little better.

The saloon was unprecedentedly full for a Tuesday night, a soft hum of chatter and occasional boisterous laughter turning to white noise in Shane’s ear. Emily took up a leaning position against the wall where he was sitting, and he managed a halfway decent conversation with her over his beer. Shane knew it was in his favor to keep a tidy relationship with the bartender. 

But that all stops when his ears somehow manage to pick up the word ‘farmer’ in some distant conversation, like he was rigged to pick up those two short syllables. 

“Yeah she’s alright. Friendly enough, even if she _is_ a bit stuck up,” Shane picks up Pierre’s voice, and his neck snaps to look at him, face contorting in disgust. Pierre is leaning against the bar’s edge not too far off, absently waving a glass of wine in the air as he spoke to Lewis, who seemed more interested in his plate of fries. 

“Stuck up hm? A bit of a harsh judgement, don’t you think?” Lewis asks distantly as he tried to dab the crumbs out of his mustache.

“Not really. I mean, she’s too good for any of us apparently. Can’t be bothered to even introduce herself to half the town residents. It’d be different if it were the city, but we’re all friends here. I’m just saying some people belong in this town and some don’t,” Pierre sniffs distastefully, his face twisting skeptically. 

Shane felt oddly sick to his stomach. 

“I think she just has a bit of a high horse and she’s not used to climbing down it, that’s all.”

“Mm, yes,” Lewis agrees noncommittally as he attacked another french fry. 

“She’s punctual though, I’ll give her that. Her produce is exceptional,” Pierre sighs like he loathed to admit it, shaking his head irritably as he took another swig of his wine. Shane has to wonder how many glasses he’d already had. 

Suddenly though, he looks perplexed, his brow furrowing slightly.“Though she never did come today. She was scheduled to deliver a pretty large harvest of corn. Wonder what-“

“She wasn’t there?” Shane interrupted. He knew he was being incredibly rude even for his standards, and the shocked expression on Pierre’s face is a mild indicator of that, as though he hadn’t even realized Shane had been sitting there.

“Excuse me?” Pierre asks indignantly, his face going redder by the second.

“Ellie. She didn’t come into town today?” Shane repeats, staring firmly at the bewildered shopkeeper. 

“Ellie?” Pierre repeats the word like it's sticky in his mouth. 

“Eleanor,” Shane says blankly. Was he the only one who called her Ellie?

Pierre’s face contorts into a scowl, his lips pulled back in a sneer. “You know, you’ve always been a bit of a hardass but _eavesdropping_ seems low even for-“

“Did Ellie come into town today or not?” Shane persists, and he can’t cover up the worry lacing his tone. Pierre seems to slowly dawn on this too, and his expression shifts to suspicious. 

“No, she didn’t. She was scheduled to come in at eight. She never came,” Pierre tells him slowly, as though reluctant to reveal such a thing to the likes of him.

Shane is standing as soon as the words register in his head, and he’s shrugging on his coat. He drops a few dollar bills on the counter, telling Emily calmly to keep the change.

“Where are you going?” Pierre asks him incredulously, but Shane is already halfway to the door.

“Something’s not right,” Is the only right response Shane can find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whups sorry I haven't posted in a hot minute! School is royally kicking my butt. Sorry there wasn't really any Shane-Ellie interaction in this chapter! Shane's a bit of a stubborn grouch but he's trying his best, he's gotta make it up to her. And Ellie is just an awkward little cryptid. I love them. Anyhow, thanks for all the kudos and comments! They bring me joy
> 
> See you guys next week ;)


	7. Chapter 7

It’s near midnight when Shane gets to her house. He’d ran half the way there, his heart lodged in his throat, but still somehow beating fast enough to make his chest hurt. As her house came into view he had to tell himself that it was normal for her lights to be off. It was midnight. People usually slept at midnight. She was probably fine. 

But Shane’s instincts have gotten him this far. And something feels fucking _wrong_.

When Shane sees the pizza box still sitting on her porch untouched, that feeling increases tenfold.

He knocks six times heavily on the door, knowing that if she hadn’t hated him before, she would now. He’s panting, his breaths coming out in choppy white puffs of air, and every second that passes where Eleanor’s front door doesn’t open is another alarm going off in his head.

“Ellie? Ellie I’m just making sure you’re alright, Pierre said you didn’t come in today,” Shane calls, waiting desperately for a light to flick on in her bedroom window. 

It never flicks on though, and Shane feels every ounce of composure he’d originally had wilt away. His heart is pounding hard against his ribcage. 

“Kid listen, I’m gonna open the door okay? I just need to make sure you’re alright,” Shane calls again, his voice breaking somewhere in the middle. 

His hands are shaking when he reaches for the knob, and he wriggles it frantically. If he weren’t feeling like he could explode any fucking second he’d laugh at the fact that she was probably the one person in this entire valley who locked their door.

And suddenly, with an amount of strength he hadn’t known he had, he was kicking her door open, cracking harshly against the wall as he broke in. He breathes heavily as he stands in the berth of her doorway, his throat clenching up.

The house was empty. She was gone. 

__________________________________________________

Marnie picks up the phone on the fifth ring.

“ _Shane? What in gods name- it’s past_ _midnight_ ,” Her voice is muddled by sleep and irritation from her staticky end of the line.

Shane is trudging up a hill, worry so far woven into his gait that he managed to trip almost every other step. 

“You haven’t seen the farmer today have you?” Shane asks her, trying to school the desperation in his tone and failing. He knows he’s panicking where he should be trying to keep a level head, but his thoughts are running a mile a minute and he just can’t seem to put a cap on it.

“ _No, I haven’t seen her at all since Halloween, why_?” His aunt seemed to have a knack for telling when something was wrong, because her voice is instantly awake. He’d love her for it if he didn’t feel like he was about to have a fucking panic attack.

“She wasn’t home last night, or tonight. And she was supposed to take in a shipment today at Pierre’s but never showed,” Shane tells his aunt quietly.

There’s staticky radio silence on the other end of the line. 

“ _I’ll call Lewis. We’ll get a search party together_ ,” Marnie says, her tone firm. She would come through, she always did.

“Thank you Marnie.”

“ _Where are you? Are you still at her house_?”

“No. I think I might know where she is but I’m not sure. Just turn the town upside down, alright?” Shane begs her hoarsely.

“ _Shane_ -“

“I’ve gotta go. Love you,” Shane mutters, hitting end call on the screen of his phone before cramming it into the back pocket of his jeans.

He came to a halt in front of his destination, feeling dread settle in the pit of his stomach.

Before him stood the dilapidated entrance to the mines. 

__________________________________________________

Whatever Shane had been expecting, it hadn’t been this. 

As soon as he steps foot inside he’s greeted by a surprisingly well lit cavern, oddly glowing torches hung off the jagged walls spilling unnatural, buttery light, and he had the apprehensive disposition that they somehow always remained lit. He’d expected pitch blackness so he supposes this is a promotion from his original judgement. 

But he isn’t fooled by the strangely welcoming shadows that dance along the stony walls of the cavern, the tug at his senses that whisper a million reassurances. 

He remembers the scars and cuts littering Ellie’s knuckles. This place had done that to her.

Shane is as far from superstitious as a person could ever be. But the strange magic that seemed to have a grip over this valley and its inhabitants, he’d come to begrudgingly accept. There were strange creatures that lived in the mines and Ellie carried around an invisible sword. 

Some speculative part of him had always theorized that all the strange bullshit that happened in this town was some top secret Joja lab experiment where he and the other townspeople were being exposed to high levels of radiation in their sleep, and experiencing these wild hallucinations of the monsters and ghouls that crawled out of the mines as consequence. 

He honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Ellie were a hallucination his mind had conjured up at this point. It seemed fitting. 

Despite this, he climbs down the first hole he sees in the rocky ground by the most rickety ladder he’d ever been inconvenienced to set eyes on, and jumps to the ground on the floor below in a way that unsettles clouds of dust and rock particles. 

“Ellie?” He calls into the cavern, the echo of his voice bouncing off the walls. “Kid it’s me, Shane. You down here?” He shouts, just a little more desperate this time. 

He spots another of those wide holes in the ground, and another ladder looking one misstep away from breaking, and he shimmies down it. 

It becomes routine. Ladder, jump down, yell like a crazy person, another hole, ladder. 

On the seventh hole, he begins to get nervous. On the seventeenth, he gets scared. And by the twenty-fifth hole he’s just plain terrified. 

Not of the strange skitters of things crawling up and down the cavern walls, or the dilapidated shapes he catches lurking in the shadows. They kept their distance, and so did Shane.

He was terrified that Ellie took a wrong fall on one of these ladders. Or that the rickety looking mine shaft he’d been too paranoid to board had given out. Or that no matter how strong he thinks she is, she’d finally been beat.

He gets down to the thirtieth floor when a cold, numb feeling of defeat settles in his gut. 

The cavern on this floor is hardly lit, making the shadows stretch in odd ways, and the strange glittering rocks on the floor seem sharper. In the strange gloom of this cavern, Shane squints around, heavily disliking the sounds of things scuttling around in the distance. 

“Ellie?” Shane shouts, his voice breaking on the second syllable. His voice is hoarse from shouting too much. “Ellie, you in here?” He shouts again, his voice echoing through the long stretch of cave.

He steps around a little bit, his sneakers crunching loudly against the rocky ground, having to pull out his phone to provide some additional light. 

He’s about seven steps down a cavern hall when he spots it.

His phone’s flashlight glints painfully off the metal of Ellie’s sword, so much to that he has to squint his eyes. Nearly dropping the phone, he staggers towards it, dropping on both knees as he reached towards it with shaking hands. 

The metal is badly damaged, actually chipped in some areas, the hilt half broken off. It’d seen a lot of action. Too much action.

“Ellie!” Shane yells desperately down the cavern hall. 

He’s back on his feet by some miracle, sprinting down the cavern, knowing that whatever awful creatures lurked in these caves would be able to hear him.

When he reaches the mouth of the cave, he skids to a stop, blowing up a plume of dust as he frantically searched the new area. 

“Oh god, Ellie,” He harshly whispers.

She’s in a curled up position on the ground not too far off, her eyes closed, her face twisted in pain. She’s covered in a layer of dirt and soot from head to toe, her clothes torn in different places. Shane is next to her on his knees in no time, his hands hovering over her limp form, too scared to touch in a way that might hurt her more. 

“Kid, it’s me,” Shane croaks, his throat feeling dry, “We’re gonna be okay. I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise,” He tells her, desperate for her eyes to open.

When they do, he swears he could cry.

“Shane?” Ellie sighs, her lips dried and cracking. She has a black eye, and two long cuts along her left cheek. He damns her to hell though, because she _smiles_ at him, however delirious she may be. “Who works at Joja?” She asks hoarsely, as though she knew another thousand Shanes. 

“The one and only,” Shane says in a shuddery breath of air. 

Suddenly, her smile wilts. “You don’t like me,” She slurs, and Shane winces. She’s hardly lucid, and he’s beginning to worry about the severity of the concussion she was racking. 

“I like you a little too damn much kid, but now’s not the time. I’ve gotta get you out of here. Can you walk or do you need me to carry you?” Shane asks her, trying to go slow so she could keep up.

She makes a face. “Ankle’s broken. And a few ribs. My shoulder’s dislocated I think,” Ellie tacks off like it’s a grocery list. 

“Okay. I’m gonna carry you then, alright?” He tells her, trying to get her to stay with him as she fought not to nod off.

“Thanks. ‘Preciate it,” Ellie whispers, her eyelashes fluttering closed, then open again. She was fighting sleep pretty hard, and Shane was grateful for it.

As gingerly as he can possibly manage, he slips one arm between the crook of her battered knees, and another around her back. When he starts to pull her towards him she cries out in pain, her face crumpling. 

Shane stops immediately, his heart pounding, but Ellie growls out, “No, I’m okay. Keep going.”

So Shane continues until he’s managed to carefully gather her in his arms, her head tucked in that hollow space between his jaw and clavicle. 

“The shaft. I couldn’t find it before I got jumped. Swarm of cave dwellers,” Ellie mumbles out as Shane begins jogging off, just needing to get her the hell out of this place. He’s only half listening to her, too hyper-focused on the task at hand. 

“The things that live down here. They’re getting smarter,” She says grimly. “They all ambushed me at once. Knocked out a wall over there. Took me eight hours to get my legs out from underneath all the rubble.”

At that Shane’s eyes flick down to her legs, where he notices her overalls have been torn to bloody shreds. A sick feeling settles in the pit of his stomach, his heart lurching. 

“Keep talking to me kid, don’t fall asleep okay?” Shane mutters quietly, his eyes searching down every cave hall for a mineshaft. 

“Shane, I’m sorry. About the tutoring notice. I should have told you,” Ellie mumbles, her voice catching.

“Jesus Ellie, I can’t believe you’re the one apologizing to me right now,” Shane mutters, his head a strong cocktail of shame and guilt. “How much of this are you gonna remember?” He asks her, feeling nervous suddenly. It’s now or never he guesses, and if he doesn’t get it out now he’s not sure if he ever will.

He can feel the barest hint of a shrug. “Probably not much. ‘M tired,” She sighs.

Shane swallows. Half of him hopes she _won’t_ remember this. “You didn’t do anything wrong, applying for the tutoring position. I think you just- you scared me.”

“Scared you?” Ellie sounds confused. He can’t blame her.

Shane takes a shuddering deep breath. “I’m- shit- I’m not used to people taking an active role in my life. People have a strong habit of coming and going where I’m concerned, and I fucking hate it. And I know that sounds like total bullshit and the kind of thing that assholes-“

“Shane,” Her voice grounds him before he can run his mouth too far. “It’s okay, I understand.”

“But you shouldn’t,” Shane tells her harshly, shaking his head. “That is such a bullshit reason, and it shouldn’t give me the excuse to be an asshole to anyone. Why are you _always_ nice to me?” He demands, needing to know more than anything.

She’s quiet for a few moments, and Shane’s painfully scared she’s fallen asleep.

“I just like you, that’s all. I like being nice to you.”

Shane holds her just a little tighter, swallows hard. An intense emotion he can’t place is gripping him by the throat and won’t seem to let go. 

He suddenly makes a right turn, and by some miracle he can spot the dim lamplight of the mineshaft not too far off. Relief flooding him, he jogs towards it, his chest feeling lighter than it had all night.

“I don’t deserve it,” Shane whispers hoarsely. She has no idea the magnitude of what she’d just said to him. 

He can feel her shifting around in her arms, and as he quickly boards the ancient looking mine shaft, she’s sitting up in his hold, so that their faces are at eye level. 

She stares hard at him. “Yes you do,” She tells him, like he was stupid to believe otherwise. 

And then, as reluctantly as she could, she leans forward and presses the barest impression of a kiss against the stubble of his cheek, as though she were trying to make a point. It’s there and gone in a second, but it still makes Shane’s stomach do backflips all the same. 

When she pulls back she stares forward at the mineshaft panel, while Shane tries to not self implode. Her cheeks are stained pink, and if hers are pink he knows his are beet red. 

_What the hell’d she do that for?_

“You press the two on the left and it’ll take us up,” She scoffs lightly, biting the inside of her cheek. 

She wiggles around in his arms again, wrapping one arm around his back and shoulders and the other across his chest to meet it. She must be planning to stay awake, however half-lidded and glossy her eyes seem. He guesses she’s going to crash hard as soon as she finds a horizontal surface.

Shane has to jostle her a little to press the buttons, but as soon as he does they’re lurching up at a faster pace than he’d imagined possible for this godawful piece of equipment. 

“Ellie,” Shane says roughly. 

“Yeah?” 

“Last night, I went over to your house to uh,” Shane winces, wondering if what he’s about to say will come off as lame. “Mostly to apologize. But also to tell you that I think you’d actually make a really great tutor for Jas,” He says awkwardly, fighting the urge to scoff. “If you even wanted to, that is. Because I wouldn’t blame you if-“

“My reason for wanting to is sort of selfish,” Ellie interrupts him, her voice quiet. Every facet of her exudes exhaustion, but especially when she says this. “She reminded me of someone. I think my wanting to tutor her at the time I applied was some desperate grasp at straws,” She says humorously, her half-lidded eyes glazed and hollow.

Shane’s quiet for a moment, the only sound between them the rapid climb of the mine shaft.

“Child whiz. Remind you of yourself?” Shane guesses, cautious. 

Ellie smiles at that, her eyes flickering. “Funnily, no. She- she reminded me of,” Her mouth snaps shut, her throat working, as though she was physically incapable of speaking the words. 

The mine shaft crawls to a slow halt, the doors screeching open. Shane eagerly steps off, coveting the solid ground beneath his feet. 

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me kid, this is all on your time okay?” He tells her firmly, giving her a subconscious squeeze.

Her face crumples at that, her expression almost pained. “Thank you,” She breathes, her voice shuddery. “And I do really want to be her tutor.”

Shane gives her a smile at that, gruff and maybe a little fond. Ellie looks rocked by it, her eyes widening.

“You’ve got the job. Now let’s get the hell out of here,” He says.

__________________________________________________

When Shane makes it back into town, his arms numb and Ellie’s head resting against his shoulder, the exhaustion hits him clean like a boulder. It had to be at least two or three in the morning now, the moon still strung up high in the sky like a lighthouse beacon guiding them back to town, and Shane genuinely feels like he could drop at any given moment.

But he won’t. Because despite everything Ellie’s been through in the past one and a half days (Shane’s still a little shocked to believe that someone could make it down there that long), her eyes stay open, awake by sheer willpower and maybe because Shane had quietly asked her to try. 

When he finally spots the lamplit town square in the distance, he’s equally agonized and relieved by the fact that at least a quarter of the towns residents are packed there, standing around in their pajamas and speaking in a worried hush.

Shane feels Ellie try to sit up a little straighter, but her head remains tiredly in that spot on his shoulder. 

“Was this you?” She asks quietly, referring to the sleep-deprived group of locals with their flashlights and slippers. They haven’t noticed them approaching yet, too caught up in laying out plans to split up and search the wooded area past the ranch and beyond. 

“I called Marnie as soon as I found your house empty,” Shane admits roughly, remembering how hollow his stomach had felt at seeing that untouched pizza box on her porch.

She’s quiet for a moment, chewing her lower lip. “I need to make it up to them,” She finally says, a look of weary determination settling over her battered face. Shane still winces every time he catches a glimpse of the mottled purpling bruise around her eye, the two gashes along her cheeks needing stitches.

“Kid, I think they’ll just be glad enough to see you alive. You can grovel in a week when you’re back in shape,” Shane grunts at her, giving her a downcast look.

Finally, someone seems to notice their quiet back and forth, and the sound of Shane’s footsteps against the sidewalk. 

“Holy _moly_ ,” breathes the squeaky-voiced red-headed little squirt Jas sometimes dragged around the ranch. Sam’s little brother he thinks, by the way he clings to the latter’s blue flannel pajama bottoms. Shane can only pray that him being here doesn’t mean that Jas was somewhere squatting in the bushes looking for her crazy uncle and the wayward farmer.

At the sound of his exaggerated gasp, the adults all turn to squint at whatever had caught the kid’s attention, and Shane can pinpoint the exact moment each of them experience the same moment of shock.

Sam weaves out of the crowd, a tight, worried look on his face as he took Ellie in, looking very much the worried golden retriever whose master took a stumble.

“Here,” He says eagerly, opening his arms so that Shane could unburden the load.

Not really knowing why, Shane pushes past him entirely, refusing to even look at those outstretched arms. Ellie remains tucked where she is, and to her credit, she doesn’t reach towards Sam either, nosing into his neck just a fraction further. 

“Dear _god_ Eleanor, are you alright?” Pierre exclaims, the color draining from his face.

“She’s fine. Where’s Harv?” Shane grunts, looking down and noticing that Ellie was struggling to keep her eyes open. “Come on kid, just a little longer,” He jostles her gently, and her arms tighten around his neck.

“Harvey went out with your aunt and a few others to go search near the train tracks. They left a while ago, they should be back soon,” Abigail provides, and Shane appreciates her straightforwardness. 

He doesn’t like the apprehensive looks fixed on Ellie, like she might keel over at any second. 

“Everyone stop looking at her like she’s dead,” Shane growls, really needing someplace to just sit the fuck down.

“What happened? Where was she?” Sam asks anxiously, clearly not getting the message to fuck off. Thickheaded was a kind word for him. Shane didn’t have the patience for kindness.

“Mind your business,” Shane snaps tiredly, his heart not really in it. He knows it’s probably not one of his best ideas, but he crouches down by the lamppost nestled in by the saloon, the townsfolk all giving him equally fussy expressions as he gingerly helped Ellie to the ground.

“Shane, it is 2:30 in the morning and we’ve been up looking for her all night. I think we all deserve a little explanation,” Pierre prattles self-righteously. Shane honestly doesn’t think he’s entitled to jack shit when it’s half his fault they were all out here in the first place.

Shane leans himself up against the lamppost, exhaustion finally winning. Ellie has settled herself on the grass right next to him, her thigh and shoulder pressed against his own and her head dropped against his shoulder. She’s asleep, he thinks, her soft breaths coming out even. He’s not even a little mad about it. He quickly shucks off his coat, draping it over her without a second thought. 

He’s sure they make a sore picture, the two of them together. Covered in several layers of mine dust and looking like they’d tumbled out of hell, but he can’t really be bothered.

“She was thirty floors down in the mines. Part of a cave dropped on her. Ribs broken. Beat to shit. But she pulled herself out. That was all her,” Shane mutters, his eyes closed. 

“Jesus Shane, you know it’s not safe to be going down there when-“

He doesn’t even have the patience to suss out whose voice it was. “Can you shut the fuck up for a minute? I almost died like seven times tonight in some fucking caves then dragged this asshole like three miles.”

There’s a response to that too, but it’s like his ears are water-logged. Shane doesn’t care that a quarter of the town is watching him right now. He lets himself drift, only able to because Ellie is right next to him, breathing. 

He wants her to stay that way for a long, long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait folks! I hope you guys like the chapter! I was always weirdly charmed by the game function that whoever you're dating comes and drags you out of the mines once you pass out, so this is my sort of non-subtle head nod to that. What isn't romantic about your partner dragging your half-dead corpse out of a mine-shaft?
> 
> see you guys next week ;^)


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